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Mrs. Mary J. Holmes Novels 


Nearly TWO MILLIO N Sold. 

THE NEW BOOK. 

Mrs. Hailam’s Companion. 

JUSX oux. 

/As a writer of domestic stories which are extreuiely interesting 
without being extravagant, Mrs. Mary J. Holmes is unrivalled. 
Her characters are true to life, many of them are quaint, 
and all are so admirably delineated that their conducv 
and peculiarities make an enduring impression 
upon the reader’s memory.” 


The following is a list of Mary J. ^Hc>lmes’ Novels 


TEMPEST AND SUN= 
SHINE. 

ENGLISH ORPHANS. 
HOnESTEAD ON THE 
HILLSIDE. 

’LENA RIVERS. 
MEADOW BROOK. 
DORA DEANE. 

COUSIN MAUDE. 
hARIAN GREY. 

EDITH LYLE. 


DAISY THORNTON. 
CHATEAU D’OR. I 
QUEENIE "HETHER= 
TON. . 

DARKNESS AND » 
DAYLIGHT. 

HUGH WORTHING" 
TON. 

CAMERON PRIDE. 
ROSE MATHER. 
GRETCHEN. 


ETHELYN’S MIS- 
TAKE. 
niLLBANK. 

EDNA BROWNING. 
WEST LAWN. 
niLDRED. 

FORREST HOUSE. 
iTADELINE. 
CHRISTMAS STORIES. 
BESSIE’S FORTUNE- 
MARGUERITE. 


UR. HATHERN'S DAUGHTERS. 


MRS. HALLAM’S COMPANION. (New.) 


All handsomely printed and bound in cloth, sold e'^erywhere 
and seni by mail, postage free, on receipt of price ($1.50), by 

^ G. W. Dillingham Co., Publishers, 

^3 West 23d Street, New York. 




;A''! 1' 


/ 

DILLINGHAM’S AMERICAN AUTHORS LIBRARY, No. 30. 


8EPT. 1897. I SSUED MONTHLY. $».00 PEN YEAR. 
ENTERED AT THE NEW YORK POST OFFICE AS SECOND CLASS MATTER. 


DESMONDE, M, D, 


BY 

HUGH WAKEFIELD. 




G, W. 


NEW YOR K: 

OOPYEIQHT, 1S9T. BY 

Dillingham G?., Publishers y 


MDCCCXCVII. 
\All rights reserved.^ 





PREFACE. 


A STORY without intent may be so much the 
more entertaining, temporarily, but if it reaches 
any lasting result it will be as a ship, without steer- 
ing gear, haply, drifts into a harbor instead of upon 
rocks. 

That this little tale is at least the outcome of 
earnest design must surely appear to some, and ap- 
peal to equally earnest consideration, though it 
confronts the deepest, sternest and most vindictive 
prejudices of humanity, and will be beaten and 
flayed from every door and window looking out on 
life whose occupant counts it worthy of even so 
much attention. 

There is another danger, however, which those 
who are solicitous for it would have it avoid, though 
the result will be that it receive even better buffet^ 
ings, withal. 

To wit : the cursory reader will see it in much 
the same position as the Christian, in the rather 
ancient hymn 


[3] 


4 


PREFACE. 


** Poised on a narrow neck of land, 

'Twixt two unbounded seas I stand.” 

and his cursory judgment, counting it a fragment 
of the recent fad in literature, will launch it, ac- 
cordingly, upon the great flood of speculative ex- 
travaganza, on one side, instead of consigning it to 
the grand ocean of earnest reality, at the other 
side, for which it has been constructed. Therefore 
let it be clearly understood, at the outset, that the 
following tale is fully founded upon fact ; that the 
actors are living, breathing beings, to-day, even to 
the Doctor’s tailless Jack, whose vigorous bark is 
still upon the distant shore ; that the operations, 
experiments and results recounted have actually 
taken place ; that there is nothing speculative in 
the work which is not so indicated, at the time, 
while whatever is in advance of established facts 
follows, scrupulously, paths logically indicated by 
accomplished discoveries, paths which, even now, 
are being anxiously explored ; and, most emphati- 
cally, that the resulting views and opinions, in 
mental and physical morality, though antagonistic 
to all logics, savor neither of dream nor fancy, but 
are the deep-founded, most earnest and honest 
convictions of two men, than whom no one is better 
fitted to know and understand humanity and fully 
appreciate social, spiritual and anatomical human- 
itarianism. 

The two men are known to each other only by 
name and repute ; but equally, for many years, 


PREFACE. 


5 


their hearts and brains have been devoted to their 
fellow men ; by different channels, in widely sep- 
arated spheres, bringing them to the same convic- 
tions. 

One is a London M. D., M. R. C. P., the other 
an L. R. C. P., M. R. C. S., L. M. Each stands at 
the head of the profession, in his locality, in the 
accepted field of medicine and surgery. One has 
also devoted years of research and experiment to 
the mental and physical advantages derivable by 
man through the possibilities of electricity, while 
the other has carried the benefiting power of hyp- 
notism farther, perhaps, than any contemporary. 

At different times it was the writer's very good 
fortune to be thrown intimately into the labors and 
thoughts of each, and in Desmonde, M. D. a little, 
perhaps, has been borrowed, from one, to supple- 
ment and substantiate the other. The results of 
their researches, too, have been, to a limited extent 
combined, more clearly to establish the ground and 
emphasize the convictions common to both. 

The conclusions are not new. The writer firmly 
believes that the very great majority of thinking 
men and women already hold them, with certain 
fear and trembling, and will, in heart, indorse every 
sentiment ; though for many reasons not one in a 
thousand, possibly, would be willing to admit it. 

He lays no claim to any originality but with un- 
flinching faith that the opinions expressed are the 
right and true theories of life he cheerfully looks 
forward to denunciations from ecclesiastic centers. 


6 


PREFACE. 


trusting that here and there one who reads may be 
better convinced and strengthened ; sure that the 
world will be just so much the better for that one, 
and satisfied that at least he has, to some extent, 
paved the way for a more distinct delineation of the 
subject by a better fitted pen. 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


CHAPTER I. 

I SAW him, first, at a philharmonic concert, in a 
great town-hall, five years ago to-night. 

It was my first night on shore affer a voyage 
nearly half way round the world. There was a 
return ticket in my pocket, and even’an angel could 
hardly have convinced me that a year — much less 
five — would pass before I should require it. I 
have just presented it to the purser, however, 
while watching the great revolving light at the 
Heads sink lower and lower into the sea; and that 
was five years ago to-night. 

I remember it as if it were yesterday. 

The pavement was crowded, though it was the 
broadest in the city. The hall was packed almost 
to suffocation. I took an admission ticket and 
drifted in, simply because a crowd was drifting ; it 

[7J 


8 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


was such a relief to wander on and on, seeing new 
faces, hearing new sounds, unaccompanied by the 
eternal grumble of machinery or restricted by the 
monotonous limitations of a steamer. 

By an odd bit of luck one vacant place remained 
in the front row of the free seats, occupying the 
entire rear of the hall. The dividing line, in front 
of them, was a broad aisle crossing the hall and 
forming the main entrance for those holding checks 
for reserved chairs. 

From directly in front of my seat a center aisle 
extended through the reserved portion to the 
stage. Thus I secured an unobstructed view of 
the performers, as well as of the people coming in, 
whose seats were on the center aisle. 

There was not a position in the hall for which I 
would have exchanged it ; and for a time I watched 
the people, entering, in keen but indolent enjoy- 
ment, after so long restriction to the familiar out- 
lines of a rather limited passenger list. 

Then my eyes were caught by a strange thing, 
occupying the second seat from the corner, in the 
rear row of reserved chairs. The seat on either 
side was vacant, and I didn’t wonder. The thing 
was alive — painfully alive — and clad in coat and 
trousers ; but it was not a man. It was a mon- 
strosity. It had feet and legs, but they were of 
no normal use and were perpetually twisting and 
jumping. It had arms, terminating in shriveled 
hands and long, wriggling fingers, that squirmed 
and knotted about each other hideously. 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


9 


With one fist he held a program to his kiiee and 
by patiently pawing at it, with the other, as a dog 
paws the ground, he succeeded in turning the 
pages. That he turned them properly and evi- 
dently followed the singers intelligently, was the 
more remarkable, as the opening selection was the 
Stabat Mater, and the lines were printed and sung 
in Latin. He followed them with eyes unusually 
large and brown, that might have been beautiful — 
even wonderful — but for the' way in which they 
rolled about and for the agony of pleading and 
despair in them. It was like a lost soul looking 
out through them ; out from the torments of 
hell. 

The face was shriyeled, yellowish-brown, and a 
mass of convulsing wrinkles. Even the forehead 
and scalp were constantly twitching. The head 
rolled about in a ghastly way, as though no bone 
connected it with the body. The lips were drawn 
about in constant contortions, and incoherent grunts 
were audible when the music ceased abruptly. 

It was brutal to thrust such a thing upon a phil- 
harmonic audience ; and yet the wretched being 
seemed to appreciate the music. Even the weird 
pawings at the program kept pace with each new 
theme and motion. I began to be glad, after all, 
that he was there. What did it matter, the tempo- 
rary chills which it might cause the rest of us, if it 
relieved his life with a single thrill of diluted joy. 

The second part of the program had begun 
when two gentlemen and a lady in elaborate even- 


10 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


ing dress entered, by the middle door, closely 
followed by others of the same party. The ushers 
bowed as ushers seldom bow except to people of 
distinction, and as they crossed the hall it was evi- 
dent that the lady and gentleman in advance occu- 
pied the attention of practically the entire audi- 
ence. 

I found myself, however, irresistibly fascinated 
by the man who entered with them, now walking 
between them and the rest of the party. 

To describe him would be as difficult, to-night, 
as it would have been five years ago. I cannot so 
much as say, with assurance, what there was about 
him to attract a second glance. He was simply 
conventionally correct, without eccentricity. 

He had black hair, touched with white, dark 
eye-brows and a heavy moustache, in a perfectly 
orthodox way presenting a face that was rather 
dark, rather strong, rather pleasant to look at. 

It was more than a whim of my own, however, 
that something indefinable marked the man. I 
had good corroborative evidence, after the concert, 
when I asked one of the ushers who he was. He 
had only seen him as he saw thousands, but 
instantly he replied : “ He is a stranger in the 
city, sir. I never saw him but once before ; ten 
years or so ago, when he attended a function of 
some kind in this hall. He came, to-night, with 
Lord and Lady Roebert.” 

It required not only an exceptional memory of 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


II 


faces for that assertion but that the face itself had 
made an exceptional impression. 

The man did not lift his eyes from the floor as 
he came toward me ; to my regret, for I wanted 
to see them. But just as the two in advance 
turned up the center aisle he raised his head, in a 
startled way, and following his glance I was again 
caught by that human horror. 

The head was thrown back as if the neck was dis- 
located. The lips were frightfully drawn and if 
ever a lost soul did look up from blistering tor- 
ment, it looked up, then, through those great, 
brown, horribly rolling eyes. Human flesh could 
not have produed a more revolting picture ; yet 
the stranger deliberately appropriated that end 
seat, leaned back with the leisurely grace of one 
accustomed to being comfortable, and instantly 
devoted his entire attention to the stage. 

Apparently it was a mistake, supposing him to 
be one of the party going up the aisle, and the 
evident shock was but the natural result of find- 
ing himself by such company. The two in advance, 
however, were surprised, on reaching their seats, 
to find themselves without him. One of the party 
was sent back ; but, after a whispered conversa- 
tion, returned alone, much to my satisfaction. 

Neither of the two could see that I was watch- 
ing them, and I became interested even to the 
exclusion of the concert, though it frequently 
roused the enthusiasm of the vast audience. 

The man only moved to readjust a hand or foot, 


12 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


occasionally, and to applaud. He was thoroughly 
absorbed in the concert and did not pay the slight- 
est attention to the being beside him. This was 
the more surprising since the wretched, writhing 
thing kept working nearer and nearer, till it was 
actually crowding against him ; nestling under the 
arm which he had thrown over the back of the next 
chair. Yet the only indication that he so much as 
realized even an obstruction to his freedom was in 
his applauding, now, with one hand on his knee, 
instead of with both hands, as at first. 

Then I discovered that those painful contortions 
were surely subsiding. And at last my astonished 
eyes beheld a picture as clearly before them now, 
as it was five years ago to-night : A poor limp 
body, motionless from toes to finger-tips, lay 
pathetically against the stalwart form. Two thin, 
white hands and shapely fingers, one upon each 
knee, were stretched out as if offering up a silent 
thanks for rest. The last quivering wrinkle had 
left the face and the lips were parted in what 
might have been the beginning of a smile but that 
they were so white and tired looking that it seemed 
more the shadow of a happy sigh. 

The forehead was white and smooth, over two 
beautiful brown eyes that were resting on the 
prima donna, as she sang the closing strains of the 
second part. The head sank gradually lower, too, 
till it rested on the strong, motionless shoulder ; 
but the man made no sign. The fingers of the 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


13 


hand that was thrown over the back of the chair 
were gently tapping in time with the orchestra. 

No one in the audience could have been more 
absorbed than he, and when the singing ceased he 
applauded as he had not before during the even- 
ing. 

Everyone applauded. Even the thin, white 
hands, that an hour before were working like dog’s 
paws on the programme, rose, slowly, and gently 
touched each other, palm to palm ; then fell again 
to the knees, to be once more at rest and mutely 
offer up more thanks for it. 

The recall was imperative. Returning, the prima 
donna sang a song that was new then, I think, to 
all of us ; but which has since lost the best of its 
beauty in its own fatal popularity. I am sure, too, 
that in all its later publicity, “ The Holy City ” has 
never been better rendered. 

My eyes were still upon the two, but my heart 
beat faster as the clear contralto swelled and rang 
in the grand refrain : “ Jerusalem, Jerusalem, lift up 
your gates and sing ! Hosanna in the highest ! 
Hosanna to your ” 

Suddenly every thought was riveted again upon 
the man I was watching. A shudder, not faint 
and quick, like a nerve tremor, but fierce and strong 
had clutched him. It seemed to crush him, 
strangle him ; like the last, convulsing shudder of 
men whom I have seen stretched, dying on the 
battlefield. 

Only then did he betray a consciousness of his 


14 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


strange companion. Every other motion was 
strained and desperate, but no mother ever touched 
a dead baby’s curl more tenderly than he lifted 
that head from his shoulder and placed it so that 
it would rest on the back of the chair instead. 

Then he staggered toward the door, like an old 
man struggling against a gale. 

As he passed me I looked for an instant full into 
his face. Great God ! that anything in heaven, 
earth or hell, could have accomplished such a trans- 
formation. It was haggard and old. It was lined 
and seamed by torture. It was distorted and 
shrunken with agony. And his eyes, fixed straight 
before him in a desperate glare, had in them all the 
horror which an hour before I had seen in the eyes 
of the wretched creature looking up to him. 

I watched him till he reached the door, while my 
thoughts were wildly conjuring theories of mind- 
cure and vicarious ministrations — even to the old 
story of one possessed of devils — to possibly or im- 
possibly account for what I had seen. 

The creature opposite, remained for a moment 
just as the stranger had left him. I doubt if he 
knew that anyone had been there. His eyes were 
fixed in a vacant stare, as one in waking from an 
ideal dream looks longingly back into the fading 
mists. Then the sharp lines reappeared ; first 
about his eyes. A cringe contracted his face. His 
head fell helplessly to one side. A groan escaped 
his lips. A spasm twisted his feet and gathered 
his fingers into ghastly knots again. 


DESMONDS, M. D. 


15 


The lost soul, devil or what, was there once more ; 
and the great hall was resounding with the last 
strains of “ The Holy City,” in the grand refrain 
which is repeated in the closing lines : 

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, sing, for the night is o’er! 
Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna forever more.” 


CHAPTER II. 

It was easy to obtain information concerning 
the monstrosity ; people are ever so ready to 
elaborate the threadbare details of an exhausted 
horror to the stranger who is capable of a few 
fresh shudders. He was a harmless creature, well 
known and considered almost a necessary adjunct 
to musical events. Something had gone wrong 
with his brain, the doctors said, and long before 
had given him up as hopelessly beyond the reach 
of science. 

One conclusion compassed my interest in the 
case : It was not beyond the reach of the man who 
took the vacant seat that night. But what the 
earthly or unearthly influence was, which recoiled 
with such vindictive fury, was enough to excite a 
much less aggressive curiosity than mine. 

Imagination ran wild with me, till I was actually 
ready to wonder if he had not, indeed, come upon 
some real, malignant incarnation there, which had 
actively resented his intrusion. 


i6 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


The concert was on Thursday night. Good Fri- 
day and Saturday I wandered about the streets, 
vainly looking for his face. I was determined to 
find him and satisfy my curiosity ; and my only 
other resource was to secure a presentation to 
Lord Roebert, for the sublime purpose of asking 
his lordship who he was who attended the Philhar- 
monic concert with their excellencies, on Thursday 
night. 

Even to this the madness possessing me was 
slowly adjusting what little common sense re- 
mained, when I caught sight of him, some distance 
ahead of me, upon the street, on Sunday morning. 

He wore a light top-coat, and high hat, but I re- 
cognized him instantly, through a slight halt on 
his left foot, which I must have noticed without 
realizing it, in the concert hall. 

I found him following a woman, poorly clad, 
who was dragging along beside her a boy of ten or 
thereabout. At the cathedral she turned and en- 
tered. The man hesitated, glancing at a cigarette 
he was smoking, as though a bit reluctant to leave 
it. 

At first I was inclined to wait outside for him, in 
case he decided to follow them, but second thought 
suggested that having found him it was folly to 
lose sight of him. Presently he threw the cigarette 
away and glanced up at the gloomy arch with a 
peculiar smile, as though there was something 
amusing in a comibination of incidents beguiling 
him inside the confines of a church. 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


17 

Finding him sitting on a bench, not far from the 
pulpit, with the boy between him and the mother, 
I selected a place for myself behind a pillar near 
by. It hid from me the altar and pulpit but, from 
comparative seclusion, gave me a fair view of the 
only object in the church which interested me. 

One glimpse of the boy’s face betrayed an idiot, 
quite as I expected. He was wholly unlike the 
other, however. There was no sign of intelligence 
or, indeed, of anything but congenital imbecility. 
The body was well enough developed but ob- 
viously there was insufficient volition even for re- 
flex action. The head was small in bone and over- 
burdened with expressionless fat. The tongue 
protruded and deep imbedded in the fat were two 
useless opportunities for eyes. The lids were but 
partially lifted and under them the eyeballs ap- 
peared so painfully drawn together that the pupils 
were entirely obscured. 

This instigated the only voluntary motion of 
which the child seem capable. It was a grotesque 
dropping of the head, a little to one side, accom- 
panied by a quick jerk upward, doubtless shading 
an atom of retina into exposure for an instant. 

Had his mother dragged him out to the grand 
Easter services in the cathedral thinking that for 
him, too, there might be a blessing? It seemed 
so, for in her silent prayer her hand involuntarily 
moved toward him, as though she were trying to 
point him out to the Omniscient One who is sup- 
posed to see the sparrow fall. 


i8 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


If the boy were capable of being blessed at all, 
however, it seemed to me that his hope lay more 
in the impassive man beside him but apprecia- 
ting, by this^ that I was much more interested in 
the man himself, than in his manipulation pf 
idiots, I practically forgot about the boy. 

It was evident that he found his surroundings 
oppressive and irritating ; but his face betrayed 
none of the boastful bravado of the most bigoted 
of all men, the professional infidel, nor the arro- 
gant antagonism of one who is wedged between 
the narrow ruts of some other highway to the 
throne. Indeed his face betrayed absolutely noth- 
ing ; not even nationality or profession. He might 
have been English, French or German, American 
or Australian. He might have been anything from 
a cobbler to an emperor incognito. There was not 
a prevailing characteristic, even, but honesty. 

Honesty stood in bas-relief in every facial curve. 
Honesty was in every motion. 

Beyond all this a singular charm and a tremen- 
dous force was easy to appreciate, but I could not 
discover the source of either. 

I was far from alone in feeling that force. 
Many about him shivered, as if a cold wind were 
cutting them ; shivered and moved, restlessly, with 
expressions of fear. Twice the seat next him was 
vacated, in spite of its advantageous position and 
the crowded condition of the church ; vacated by 
strong men, whose faces I saw grew livid there and 


DESMONDE, M. D. 1 9 

who pushed their way out with the nervous energy 
of people taken suddenly ill in a crowd. 

Verily there was no one in the cathedral who 
was less conspicuous or obtrusive, and yet, when 
the procession came down the aisle, each priest 
and singer, as he passed, turned and looked at him, 
over the intervening heads. Their eyes opened 
wider, in a startled way, and remained, for a mo- 
ment, fixed and staring. For that moment each 
one forgot to chant, so that the singing ceased en- 
tirely in that part of the procession passing through 
the circle of influence ; and even to the ear there 
was a space of silence moving along the moving 
line of song. 

The mother was chafing her hands and glanced 
toward the boy as if crediting the condition to 
him. But his face was turned away from her and 
toward the stranger, upon whom she too cast one 
quick glance, shivered, crossed herself, and kneel- 
ing hid her face in her hard, cold hands, upon her 
book and beads. 

In a moment came a signal for all to kneel — all 
but the stranger, who appeared wholly oblivious, 
watching the head of his cane, as he turned it half 
way round and back. 

It gave me a good opportunity to glance at the 
boy again, and though I fully expected all I saw, 
the shock caught my breath and for an instant 
stopped my heart. His tongue had disappeared. 
His lips were parted in an expression of glad sur- 
prise. One hand was timidly touching the stran- 


20 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


ger’s knee and two eyes, not very wide open, but 
as straight as yours or mine, looked wonderingly 
up into that strange and unresponsive face. 

The sermon which followed was from the words : 
“ I am the resurrection and the life,” and as it pro- 
gressed I could see no change in the positions of 
the two. The cane kept up its motion as regular 
as the revolving light on the Heads. The man 
seemed utterly unconscious that two eyes had 
opened at his bidding and turned to him in one 
long look of gratiti^de ; that timid fingers, in their 
first intelligent volition, stretched out to him. The 
only thing which appeared worthy of his attenticfn 
was the knotted head of his uneasy cane. Never 
was mortal more earnestly intent upon nothing ; 
more oblivious to everything. 

I wondered if he could be listening to the ser- 
mon, and listened myself, for a time ; but it was 
too hackneyed to receive such close attention. 

In rounded periods, properly appropriate to the 
occasion, it repeated the assertions which, with a 
little vamping to the age and location, have echoed 
under sacerdotal arches for fifteen hundred years. 
What they have lost in sincerity they have gained 
in audacity, and from having been so much re- 
peated we are expected, of necessity, to receive 
them, now, whether the preacher any longer be- 
lieves what he is saying, or not. 

In that delightfully stupefying, rythmic way, the 
very quintessence of insincerity, the priest was 
declaring : All things are in the hands of God, 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


21 


whether to break in pieces or to make whole. In 
his inscrutable judgments he visits the iniquities of 
the fathers upon the children unto the third and 
fourth generation. In his ways, which are not our 
ways, and his thoughts which are not our thoughts, 
those whom he loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth 
every son in whom his soul delighteth. Dearly 
beloved brethren, are you afflicted ? Remember 
it is by God’s kind hand and by his loving will. 
Behold no affliction for the time seemeth joyous 
but grievous ; but be ye comforted, for on this 
glad Easter morning I bring you divine assurance 
that your affliction is only an evidence of the kind 
father’s eternal love. It is the means which he is 
taking to call you from the gall of bitterness and 
the bonds of iniquity, and draw you nearer to his 
blessed son our Lord, who died for you and rose 
again this Easter morning, to be your resurrec- 
tion and your life, saving you from all sin and suf- 
fering here and hereafter.” 

For the inelegance of it I confess with shame 
that, at this juncture, applying the words to the 
mother and imbecile I had most in mind, I mut- 
tered : “ What rot ! I wish that that fellow who 
seems able to work such miracles would take his 
eyes from his cane for an instant and fix them on 
the priest. I believe it would hammer a bit of 
common sense into his sermon.” 

Then as I listened again the harangue went on : 
“ Human hands and brains are powerless to help 
you. Science can never bring relief. Christ is 


22 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


your resurrection and your life, and whatever be 
your affliction I charge you put your faith in — ” 

A death-like silence broke the unfinished sen- 
tence. There was a startled glance toward the 
pulpit from all over the vast congregation, while 
instinct rather than intuition turned my eyes to- 
ward the man I had 'been watching. The cane 
was still. He was apparently looking up at the 
priest. 

Then the word “ science ” sounded from the 
pulpit as if it were the closing word of the last 
sentence, and the sermon went on, again ; but not 
in the stilted swing of pulpit oratory. The words 
were now haltingly spoken and the sentences hesi- 
tatingly rounded ; and they came to me with a 
curious sense of familiarity, as though I almost 
knew, in advance, what each word would be. 

“ Science is omnipotent ; science is god. By it 
man breaks the bonds that torture, and lifts the 
cloak of suffering from his afflicted fellow man. By 
it the curses of heredity are conquered and victims 
rescued from the vengeance of broken law. 
Nature’s imperfect work is perfected, her blunders 
are rectified. Science speaks and the blind can 
see ; the deaf hear, and the sick and halt take up 
their beds and walk ; lepers are cleansed ; 
dead are raised up, and the poor have true salva- 
tion brought to them. 

“ Science depends upon no reported miracle or 
theory of an unknown god, but, standing on the 
firm foundation of inexorable necessity and eternal 


DESMONDS, M. D. 


^3 


law, it works its wonders by placing error, ignor- 
ance and all evil in harmony with that which has 
been, is and ever shall be the resurrection and the 
life — intelligence and truth. It redeemeth our lives 
from destruction, saying. Return, ye children of 
men. 

“ He that hath ears to hear let him hear.” 

The preacher left the pulpit in the stillness of 
death. I wondered if he realized whose sermon he 
had preached. I wondered if the man whom I was 
watching knew — knew any more than he seemed 
to know of the boy beside him and of the miracle. 
His eyes were again upon his cane. 

He roused himself, for a moment, leaned over 
the boy and whispered something to the mother. 
It was such a shock to her that her first response 
was simply to cross herself, and the question was 
evidently three times repeated before it was 
properly answered. The stranger was writing the 
answer on his cuff, with a gold pencil, before she 
gathered her scattered senses sufficiently to realize 
something of the import of what had been said. 
Then she bent forward, with a quick, startled 
motion, turned the boy’s face toward her and 
peered into it. She uttered a faint cry, caught the 
child in her arms, and fell upon her knees, press- 
ing her lips to her book and beads. 

She evidently lacked the boy’s first instinct to 
turn her eyes or stretch her hand toward him who 
had done it. She was devoutly thanking God for 
his great Easter blessing, which was the one and 


24 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


only thing for her to do ; but unfortunately it was 
the worst thing she could possibly have done for 
the boy. In the sudden shock, for which the child 
was unprepared, the expression vanished from his 
face, his tongue protruded, his eyes drew together 
and helpless and unresponsive as before he hung 
upon his mother’s arm. 

The stranger winced. His forehead contracted. 
But he did not again take his eyes from his cane. 

The organ was playing and soon the Easter choir 
sang an anthem arranged from the Resurrection 
Hymn, while the clink of the coins sounded as the 
offerings were received. 

The organ was plainly in view and, having been 
deprived, till now, of seeing, my eyes wandered 
that way till something dragged them back again 
just in time to see the stranger turning into the 
aisle and to catch one glimpse of his face — the 
awful face which I saw on Thursday night. 

What could have done it ? Why did I let him 
go ? I was more than ever anxious to know him ; 
but there was something in that suffering so much 
more than in his might that, struggling in that 
awful agony, I dared not follow him. I sat there, 
trembling for him, and let him go, 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


25 


CHAPTEEr III. 

A FEW days later I read in a newspaper that 
Richard Desmonde, M. D., with several clusters of 
distinguishing initials following, had that day sailed 
for his home, some thousand miles or more away. 
It stated that for a week he had been the guest of 
Lord and Lady Roebert, while treating their 
daughter, who, it appeared, had long been consid- 
ered hopelessly paralyzed and insane. It referred 
to an operation which the consulting physicians 
pronounced little less than a miracle, and to the 
complete restoration of both mental and physical 
functions, as the result. It congratulated his ex- 
cellency that his continued importunity had finally 
succeeded in securing the distinguished surgeon’s 
services, though it intimated that the appeals had 
been backed by a fair sized fortune. There was 
interpolated the rather odd remark that those who 
knew Dr. Desmonde well declared that had his ex- 
cellency been destitute and the doctor obliged to 
pay even his own traveling expenses, the case 
would have received earlier attention. I know^ 
now, how true that statement was, notwithstanding 
the fact that it appeared in a newspaper ; but the 
immediate effect of the article was simply to revive 
my curiosity, to such an extent that I deliberately 
resolved to follow Dr. Desmonde to his home. 

While making the journey I even plotted some 


26 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


subterfuge, like putting myself in his hands as a 
patient ; and not till I reached my destination and 
hotel, did I realize what a fool I was. 

In no very amiable mood I was coming from the 
breakfast room, when the clerk accosted me to in- 
quire concerning the length of my stay in the city. 
I had a mind to tell him that it was strictly my own 
affair ; but he seemed a well-meaning, consumptive 
kind of fellow — very decidedly consumptive, it 
proved, later on, and many an hour I spent by his 
bed in the consumptive ward at the hospital — so I 
softened the reply, concluding it with an inquiry 
if he knew a Dr. Desmonde, residing in the city. 

Poor fellow. The absurdity of the question threw 
him, forthwith, into a coughing fit ; he managed, 
however, to keep his eyes fixed upon my cranium 
with a look that was unmistakeable. 

Dr. Desmonde was doubtless the hemisphere’s 
great specialist in brain disorders — the more shame 
to me for my ignorance — and a cause was at once 
established in the mind of my first acquaintance, 
accounting for my appearance, with no visible busi- 
ness, from the other side of the earth. 

As soon as he could articulate, the clerk replied, 
in a wheezy way : 

“ Certainly, sir. Certainly, I know Dr. Des- 
monde and can highly recommend him. I should 
employ him myself if I ever required a physician. 
You turn to your left on going out. Then turn 
again down the third street to the left and he is 
again on your second left hand corner. You can’t 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


27 


miss it. Stone house with tower, well up. High 
stone wall on the street. ‘ Muckross ’ cut in the 
stone arch above the gate and ‘ Desmonde, M. D.’ 
on a small brass plate. Office entrance round the 
corner on the side street.” And he waved me to- 
ward the door with a don’t-be-afraid graciousness 
that was exasperating. 

I thanked him severely and replied : 

“ I am not here to consult Dr. Desmonde.” 

He said “ Oh,” and coughed himself down the 
hall. He didn’t believe it. How could he ? It 
was a lie. 

My next acquaintance was the proprietor him- 
self, and forewarned I advanced more cautiously. 
He sauntered up with his hands professionally 
deep in his pockets and ask;ed if there were any 
commercial houses to which he could direct me ; 
government offices I wished to find ; private resi- 
dences I would visit ; public institutions requiring 
my attention. I was simply helpless to be helped, 
and making the most plausible explanation possible 
of my inoffensive holiday intentions I backed it 
with the fact that I did not know so much as the 
name of a mortal in the city, saving once having 
read somewhere of a Dr. Richard Desmonde resid- 
ing there. It was cautiously put, but it instantly 
resulted in the same quick glance at the upper part 
of me ; and I’ll be bound that Col Warden’s tongue 
was twisting itself to tell me of the three lefts, with 
Muckross cut in an arch above the gate, and Des- 


28 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


monde, M. D., on a small brass plate and an office 
entrance on a side street. 

One hand was already out of his pocket and 
moving toward the left when he thought better of 
it and replied : 

“ My word, there’s few in the world who haven’t 
heard of Desmonde, now, Ever see him ?” 

“ I never had the pleasure of meeting him,” I 
said, discreetly. 

“ No, see him, to look at him, I mean,” he re- 
peated. 

“Twice, at a distance, yes,” I said. 

“Well, never mind the distance. You’ll know 
him again, and that’s enough,” the colonel ex- 
claimed. “ My word, he’s a great one ; wild as a 
Tasmanian buster, but 'the cleverest doctor that 
walks the earth, look where you will for the other 
one. And what’s more, you ought to meet him. 
Wait a bit till I see if I can’t bring the thing 
about.” 

He stepped to the telephone, and after the bells 
and numbers I heard : 

“ Good morning, Kate. Why I know you by the 
glint of your eye, girl. Is the doctor in ? No. 
No one is dying. Only when the doctor comes 
down tell him I have a gentleman here from, from, 
what ? — No. You didn’t understand where from 
for I didn’t say. I don’t know. Say he is a for- 
eigner who has heard of the doctor and wants a 
bit of a yarn with him. Say I am taking him round 


DESMONDE, M. D. 29 

to the club to-night for that purpose, and ring me 
up if it’s so the doctor can’t go.” 

It seemed a rare bit of blind luck till, on the way 
to the club, Colonel Warden remarked: 

“ We’ll likely find him in the billiard room, 
smashing cues and cursing like a pirate.” 

Horrified, I began to vaguely realize that I had 
followed the wrong shadow, in a senseless impres- 
sion that a face which I saw in the cathedral and 
a name in the newspaper pertained to the same 
individual. At all events, the man whom Colonel 
Warden pictured was not the man who lifted the 
poor creature’s head from his shoulder at the phil- 
harmonic concert. One might be the king of 
scientists and the other but a wandering exponent 
of some black-art quackery; but the face that fas- 
cinated me was the one I longed to meet. 

Thoroughly disappointed I followed Colonel 
Warden into the sumptuous clubhouse and up the 
broad stairs leading to the entertainment rooms. 
While on the stairs there reached us, through the 
open door of the billiard-room, the exclamation : 

Jumping Moses! You’re live wire or I’m a sin- 
ner. 

“ That’s him. That’s Desmonde,” the colonel 
chuckled. “,He’s at a game now, so you go in 
first and have a good look at him. I’ll wait outside 
till the game’s done. He’s worth a quiet look 
when he’s at billiards. Sometimes he plays like 
the devil let loose, and again he can’t hit a ball. 
That’s when he smashes cues and curse.s. They’ll 


30 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


tell you it’s opium, and morphia, and chloral, and 
whiskey, and heaven knows what not. His head is 
just well enough up to make a good mark, you 
know, and whoever’s a bit envious or jealous, must 
have a shy at it. But don’t believe all you hear 
until you know him. My word you won’t believe 
it then even if he swears to it himself, which he 
likely will.” 

I entered the billiard-room simply to be rid of 
Colonel Warden’s conversation ; for if there was 
one man in the world whom I cared less to meet 
than another, it was that same Dr. Desmonde, 
notwithstanding his celebrity. 

The first glance disclosed a long, well lighted 
and elaborately furnished billiard-room, with gen- 
tlemen playing, smoking, drinking, watching, talk- 
ing, laughing ; evidently the cream of the city’s 
aristocracy. The second glance rested upon one 
man and all else disappeared. It was the face 
from the cathedral and the concert hall ; the name 
from the newspaper and the small brass plate. It 
was Desmonde, M. D. 

He was bending over the table. His coat was 
off and his cuffs and tie. His waistcoat was un- 
buttoned and his collar, at the front. His hair 
fell rakishly over his forehead. A cigarette was 
between his lips. His eyes flashed with merri- 
ment. But I could only recall Colonel Warden’s 
words and my heart sank as I stood and watched. 

The cue glided along his fingers. The balls 
clicked and some one said : “ By Jove, Desmonde, 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


31 


you’re a holy terror to-night,” to which he replied : 
“ Good old cue !” and waving it over his head burst 
into a hearty laugh. 

It was the first time I had heard his voice, yet it 
startled me like the sudden sound of the voice of 
an old friend. It was magnetic and musical. 

The game went on and the fascination returned 
to me. In the warmth of the club as in the rigor 
of the cathedral and the esthetic atmosphere of 
the concert that same indefinable charm made him 
the marked man. He was the spirit of life in the 
billiard-room, to which they all turned to laugh, 
just as he had seemed the spirit of death in the 
cathedral from which they all turned with a shud- 
der. That indefinable thing harmonized his most 
boisterous jest with dignity, and even then I could 
imagine him smashing cues and cursing and still 
remaining like himself and unlike other men. 

Indeed, why not acknowledge at once, that since 
then I have seen and heard precisely what Colonel 
Warden described. But I seriously doubt if Dr. 
Desmonde was ever out of temper in his life, un- 
less that degenerate term could cover a colossal 
indignation always roused in him by fraud and 
bigotry, unnecessary ignorance, and most of all by 
hypocrisy. He surely never lost his temper at a 
billiard-table, at any rate. His cue was no more 
to him, forsooth, than a penholder or a match. 
He could have had them made of gold and tipped 
with diamonds, if he chose. He acknowledged a 
bad shot by berating the pocket for dodging to es- 


32 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


cape his ball and in the loss of an interesting 
game he found a boyish delight in exhibiting his 
herculean strength; twisting the cue that failed 
him as though it were a straw. 

At all events I am sure that it was worth a cue 
to see him “ smash ” it, and that in the aptness and 
originality and the endless variety of the super- 
fluous compounds he arranged, there seemed but 
the escape of irrepressible energy, from one too 
much a boy to be a man, too much a man to be 
anything but a gentleman. 

Yes, and he drank, too. Let us have it all out 
and over with, at once. He was drinking that 
night in the billiard room, and the quondam friends 
who most generously aided him in the consumption 
of his liquor will be the first to tell you that he 
drank in excess of all reason. Believe them. There 
is both grammatical and mathematical truth in 
their assertion. I have seen him drink as I doubt 
if another mortal ever did or could ; but I never 
knew him subdued, excited or bewildered by alcohol, 
and on an occasion when he came to consider it 
unwise I saw him deliberately stop, at once, en- 
tirely and forever. 

“ I wish you’d give me a show, Desmonde," his 
opponent exclaimed. “ If you make that shot you 
are a hundred before I’m fifty, and I can’t stand 
that, you know.” 

“You’ll have to take a dose -of You’re-another, 
in hot whiskey, then, my boy,” replied the doctor. 
“ You were a hundred to my forty, this time last 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


33 


night, and I am going into that pocket or — off the 
table,” and turning to the marker, without a pause 
and before the ball had left the cushion, he was 
saying : “ Head off that blooming sheep of mine 

and drive him back, will you. I’ll have a wire 
netting round this paddock before I go golfing 
here again.” 

The opponent played and missed, at which the 
doctor shouted in glee ; but the balls lay in such 
a position that it was difficult to see what could 
be made of them and I rose with the rest to watch 
as the doctor stretched his rather portly self upon 
the table. 

The position was exasperatingly tempting, in the 
youthful atmosphere pervading the room that 
night, and among some trophies, decorating the 
wall, was one, hanging just behind him, adding an 
irresistibly apt insinuation. It was a braided bam- 
boo, resembling a modern tennis racket. The sug- 
gestive combination caught the eye of someone 
standing safely behind. He cautiously lifted the 
bamboo, holding it above his head, ready to ad- 
minister the good old orthodox chastisement, as his 
contribution to the general outbreak. 

Under the threat the cue did its work, in a way 
that was simply masterly. The three balls were 
pocketed and a cannon scored, by the same hand 
that a moment before sent a ball careering off the 
table. In watching the stroke the second striker, 
standing behind, was generally forgotten. He had 
apparently forgotten himself, too, for the bamboo 


34 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


did not move even when the doctor left his cue 
upon the empty table, slipped carelessly back, 
stuffed his hands in his pockets and stood erect, 
looking up and laughing in the face of the six-foot 
fellow, still holding the bamboo above him. 

Then they all looked and a wild shout arose : 
for in that graphic pose the man was utterly un- 
conscious. His half-closed eyes rested dreamily 
on the spot which a moment before was so tempt- 
ingly occupied. The merry doctor stepped back a 
pace, made a slight motion, with his head, the eyes 
opened with a start and the bamboo fell, with a 
resounding whack, upon the empty table. 

The uproar only subsided when the doctor ex- 
claimed ; “ I say, Vinton, that reminds me of a 
story.” 

Pulling one hand from his pocket and thrusting 
it out, at arm’s-length, for some waiter to take the 
hint, and button on a cuff, the doctor began the 
tale. In the midst of it the other hand went out 
in the opposite direction, and at the end the doc- 
tor turned, abruptly, left them all laughing and 
crossed the room toward where I was sitting, 
struggling with his collar by himself. 

It was too much for him, however, and almost in 
front of me he resigned it to a waiter who was fol- 
lowing with his coat and tie, remarking : “ I say, 

will you kindly damn this thing for me ?” Then 
holding his hands behind him, for his coat, he 
looked at me, observing: “The obtrusive antag- 
onism of animate things like waiters, and the inor- 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


35 


dinate obstinacy of inanimate things — collar buttons 
and billiard balls — have delayed my extending to 
you the courtesies of our club. We are glad to 
'welcome you, sir, and hope you will drop in often 
while you remain in the city.'' 

I took his proffered hand under the impression 
that he must have seen me coming up the stairs 
with Colonel Warden, and was cordially anticipat- 
ing an introduction. With the other hand he was 
buttoning his waistcoat. 

“ As you are simply knocking about for pleasure,'’ 
he added, you may not command a supply of 
friends, in our out-of-the-way corner ; and if you 
will allow me I will put your name on our club 
guest-book. It will give you the same rights as a 
regular member, you know, and may while away a 
lonely hour for you, now and again. My name is 
Desmonde, M. D.” 

Mine is Willard,” I replied, handing him my 
card, which he deposited in a prescription book. 

“ We’ll drink to your happiness. What shall it 
be ?” he asked, snapping his fingers for a waiter. 

I began a labored explanatory apology, to the 
end that, without inherent principle or prejudice, I 
was still a total abstainer. He interrupted me 
with the compact and comprehensive recapitula- 
tion : 

“ Teetotaler but not prohibitionist, eh ? By all 
that’s great you shatter one of the fundamental 
theories of my life. I’ve always held, you know, 
that a teetotaler was either an idiot, who didn’t 


3 ^ 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


know enough to taste a good thing when he smelled 
it, or a lost drunkard, struggling to reform. You 
are neither one, but an inconsiderate exception 
that actually disproves a rule. 

“ I am diametrically antipodal. I’m a rank and 
officious prohibitionist, but the farthest rnan you 
ever met from being a teetotaler. When I see the 
wrecks which liquor leaves I wish that its man- 
ufacture might be forever stopped and that every 
existing drop might be stored in my wine-cellar. 

Hello, Warden, you are late to-night,” he said, 
turning about to greet Colonel Warden, who was 
coming up, behind him. And by the way, didn’t 
my housekeeper say you were bringing a — a — what 
the devil was it now, she called him ? Oh, a for- 
eigner to the clubp to-night ? Trot him out, old 
man, and let’s have a look at him. I haven’t much 
time you know. Have an appointment with a 
patient for half an hour or more ago.” 

“ It was Mr. Willard, here, I brought, but I’ve 
missed doing the introduction,” he replied. 

Mr. Willard,” the doctor repeated. “ He isn’t 
a foreigner. We are old friends. At least I hope 
that we shall be by this time to-morrow, for I want 
you to dine with me,” he continued, turning to me. 
“ Bachelor, you know. All alone. Come in your 
shirt-sleeves if you like ; or come out of them if it’s 
any more convenient. Warden will direct you ; or 
no, I’ll send my carriage for you. Six o’clock, 
sharp, to-morrow night. Don’t fail me. I want 
you to see my dog. I must be off, now, or my 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


37 


patient will either recover or die from disease in- 
stead of from the doctor, which is against all pro- 
fessional instincts.” 

Turning for a farewell word to Colonel Warden, 
he added : “ Oh, yes. Mr. Willard and I met 

twice, while I was away last month ; once at a phil- 
harmonic concert and once in the cathedraL” 


CHAPTER IV. 

Through the night and the following day I was 
so intensely wrought, in an absurd struggle to 
come at some rational conclusion concerning the 
man, that I frequently found myself clinching my 
fists and grinding my teeth in the heat of it. 

Obviously he possessed phenomenal hpynotic 
powers and a will and intuition that were, of them- 
selves, phenomenal. There was nothing I had 
seen which was beyond what I could imagine 
might result from such a combination ; while the 
ease with which he remembered and disposed of 
me suggested the addition of clairvoyant possi- 
bilities. 

Now my curiosity in. no way impelled me to 
psychic research or to the investigation of black-art 
necromancy, however whitened by scientific mani- 
pulation. The qualities were distinctly repellant 
when they appeared as integrals of this man whom, 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


3S 

at the best, they neither explained nor accounted 
for. 

The stroke of six brought at least the promise 
of fruition, in a polished brougham, drawn by a 
grand pair of bays, driven by a stately automaton. 
It was an ideal medical transport, as versatile as the 
doctor himself ; but I had hardly begun upon its 
eccentricities when it stopped, at a gate, in a 
massive wall rising twelve or fourteen feet above 
the pavement. “ Muckross,'’ was cut in the stone, 
above it, and “ Desmonde, M. D.” on a small brass 
plate ; while about the bell-push, on the right, in 
illuminating letters, was the information that the 
office entrance was on the side street. 

Inside the gate a winding flight of stone steps, 
walled on either side, led up to a beautiful lawn, 
in the center of which stood the great stone man- 
sion ; its foundation at least ten feet above the 
street. A broad asphalt walk led to another flight 
of steps, and between two life-size marble figures I 
reached an inset veranda as large as many a house. 
The decorated arches were supported on heavy 
pillars and the front was guarded by a massive 
balustrade. 

Long windows opened upon the balcony, beside 
the great carved oak doors, which were unlatched, 
before I could touch the bell, by one whom I 
seemed at once to recognize as “ Kate,” the 
doctor’s housekeeper. She was a small and merry 
little thing, but capable of severity, beyond the 
slightest doubt. Her hair had a crinkly wave and 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


39 


her eyes had flash as well as sparkle in them. 
There were dimples in her cheeks and chin and her 
lips smiled in pretty sweetness, but assuredly had it 
in them to say what was appropriate, even when it 
was neither sweet nor pretty. She struck me at 
once as an excellent executive and an ideal house- 
keeper for what little I already knew of the doctor, 
and it required no prodigious intuition to add that 
she was one upon whose right side it would be 
well to stand, if one proposed to stand at all, in 
that mansion called Muckross. 

“ This is Mr. Willard, I suppose,” she said, smil- 
ing and looking me through and through. “ The 
doctor was called away to an accident, but left 
word that the carriage should go for him at once, 
if he had not returned when you came. Will you 
wait in the drawing room, sir, or in the snuggery ? 
You can smoke in the snuggery. You can smoke 
where you like, though, for that matter.” 

She was taking my hat and cane as I replied : 

“ In the snuggery, by all means. The name is 
very seductive.” But before I turned as she * 
indicated I caught a glimpse of the grand drawing 
room, through an arch of tiles and oak, between 
heavy portieres. The snuggery, which I entered, 
was as different as a snuggery should be, but so 
like it that it could be nothing but its vis-a-vis, 
across the great tiled hall. It was a large room, 
but so hung about with rare prints and paintings, 
so surrounded by oak-shelved books, so robbed of 
its corners by marbles and bronzes, so softened in 


40 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


its tile floor by oriental rugs, so temptingly littered 
by divans and arm-chairs, so suggestive of har- 
mony, in a grand organ, built into the side wall, 
so coaxingly encumbered by tables covered with 
literature, so seductively scented with incense 
hinting of burnt offerings in the pipe of peace, so 
hospitably erratic in the glow from bituminous 
blocks that were burning in a deep, tiled alcove, 
and in brilliant variations from the setting sun 
flashing through stained-glass windows, that, not- 
withstanding its length and breadth and height it 
was a perfect snuggery. 

When I was seated, Kate placed a smoking-stand 
beside me, remarking : 

“ The doctor says you never drink, Mr. Willard, 
but I make a tonic of lime-juice and bitters in soda, 
that is refreshing and a good appetizer. I should 
be glad to mix you a glass if you would like to try 
it, while you wait.” 

Ah, Kate, how many hundreds — Avhat ? thousands 
— well, how many thousands of times you have 
filled that glass for me since then ; and how I 
should like to have it filled again, right now. But 
it only reminds me of the miles on miles of blue- 
black ocean multiplying between me and beautiful 
Muckross, even while I write. 

It is strange to realize that you are not some- 
where within call to-night; but stranger still to 
think of that first afternoon, when I had to ask 
if I was right in guessing that you were the doc- 
tor’s Kate, and if so what was the rest of it. 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


4T 

How you did laugh. Your laugh is like your 
bitters, Kate. It is always refreshing and a good 
appetizer. Many a time it has broken and lifted 
clouds of anxiety that were hanging over me, just 
as I’ve often seen the rising sun scatter the mists 
up that deep valley stretching into the mountains 
back of Muckross. But you didn’t tell me the rest 
of it, after all. You simply replied : 

“You have said it all, Mr. Willard, when you 
have said the doctor’s Kate. The dog is the doc- 
tor’s Jack, and the housekeeper is the doctor’s 
Kate. We shouldn’t know ourselves by any other 
name, and I’m very sure that no one else would 
know us.” 

With that you left me to my temperance bitters 
and my thoughts, which were : that though I had 
made good progress to be thus ensconced in the 
doctor’s snuggery waiting for his dinner-gong, it 
far from followed that the acquaintance would sink 
deeper than the surface, or go beyond the welcome 
he was evidently disposed to extend to the stranger. 
So often those whose outer doors stand widest open 
keep the real treasures of the heart in vaults that 
are fire and burglar proof; and even friend proof 
in their bolts and combinations. 

A peculiar feature of the house which struck me 
forcibly from the first, and grew as I saw more of 
it, was an utter lack of anything professional. The 
lower story suggested only a sumptuous private 
residence. The second floor was devoted to bed- 
rooms and a large billiard room. The first cham- 


42 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


ber in the tower was fitted with astronomical 
charts, apparatus and text books, and in the obser- 
vatory above it, an excellent telescope was 
mounted. 

The “ office entrance ” was a mystery, and it an- 
noyingly strengthened the clairvoyant theories 
that were taking possession of me. 

The night before, when it appeared that I had 
mistaken some hypnotic nobody for the great Des- 
monde, M. D., in rankling disappointment I longed 
for the nobody, hypnotism or what not thrown in ; 
but now, the possibility that Dr. Desmonde was, 
himself, a very hypnotic somebody, brought only 
resentment and defiance. It actually seemed as 
though the utter disruption of my dream waited 
but confirmation that the idol stood upon feet of 
clairvoyant clay, holding in its hands some mystery 
of the mesmeric healing art. 

My revery was interrupted by the sharp and 
rampant barking of a dog. It was not so loud as 
it was omnipresent and penetrating. It permeated 
everything and exuded from everything, till the 
very books on the shelves seemed to be barking. 

Presently another voice reinforced it, evidently^ 
to the same end and in much the same manner, 
shouting ; “ Kate ! Kate ! Fire ! Water ! Murder ! 
Police ! Kate ! Oh, there you are. Why didn’t 
you say so. In the snuggery is he ? That’s right. 
Now hurry along my slippers and — What ? That’s 
no reason why I shouldn’t have my slippers and — 
Jumping Moses, how am I to know where they 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


43 


are ? Where I left them, perhaps. What ? Well 
I don't care if he can. I wish that you could. 
Just listen and see if you can't. Now. I want my 
slippers and — Before dinner? Certainly. Imme- 
diately quick. Right away very previously. Look 
here. I shall not stir from this spot till I have on 
my slippers and my old smoking jacket — the old 
one, mind you. Oh I say. Jack, can't you cork up 
that bark of yours for a second ? Kate is here, 
don't you see ? I have something to say to her 
myself, when you've finished. Look now. Go 
into the snuggery and tell the rest of it to Mr. 
Willard. Give him a good welcome to Muckross, 
and tell him I'm coming to indorse it the moment 
that Kate produces my old jacket and slippers and 
not one bally dot before. 'Way with you. Into 
the snuggery. The snuggery. Go !" 

A wave of silence drifted down the hall, followed 
by the click of tiny claws on the tile floor, and into 
the open door of the snuggery there came — ? After 
five years of the most friendly intercourse I can- 
not even now say with any certainty what it was 
that came and stood in the open door, except that 
it was The Doctor's Jack. 

^‘Dog" is a forlornly inadequate appellation 
for the diminutive thing that paused on the 
threshold to inspect me. He was as sleek and 
animated as an eel ; a delicate tan-color, from nose 
to tail ; a perfect little gentleman ; a vest-pocket 
edition of the unabridged volume known as Des- 
monde, M. D. His ears were suggestively lifted, and 


44 


desmdnde, m. d. 


out of a tiny, terrier face, two bright brown eyes 
looked up at me. I fancied— perhaps it was only 
a fancy — that they turned studiously toward my 
cranium, and that the wee nose swerved, a bit, as if 
about to indicate that the office entrance was on 
the side street. 

To avoid anything so embarrassing and being 
anxious to accelerate an amicable understanding 
with this new feature, which was obviously also 
essential to a complete and harmonious amalgama- 
tion, I mentioned his name, in a friendly way, much 
as Kate had mentioned mine, and snapped my 
fingers, after the most approved fashion. But 
bless your precious little soul, my dear Doctor’s 
Jack, how my advances did fail to accelerate. I 
really thought you were a dog, you know, and that 
you would bark or bite or lick my hand or — -or do 
something, straightway. However, the satisfaction 
was all the greater when, at last, you did drop 
your ears, give that delicate, muffled sneeze, which 
even then I understood as expressive of approval, 
and come trotting across the snuggery, wagging 
your — Oh Jack ! I beg your pardon. Of course I 
know you haven’t any tail. And confusion take 
him who ever dared to doubt even so much as 
your claim to having been born without one, just 
like other gentlemen. I quite understand that the 
quirky little tuft of hair, on you, where vulgar dogs 
have tails, has nothing to do with the case. You 
mistook my meaning. Jack. You mistook it en- 
tirely. I was only referring to a habit you have — 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


45 


and you really have it, Jack — in moments of exotic 
emotion, of involuntarily attempting to wag some- 
thing behind the osseous articulations of your spinal 
column. And, there being nothing there to wag, 
your little haunches catch the unexpended vibra- 
tory oscillations. You certainly did, Jack, you 
wagged your haunches as you came across the 
snuggery. 

Then last of the trinity came in the doctor, 
slippered and jacketed ; but the old jacket was an 
exceeding durable as well as admirable work of 
art, proof against betraying age, or else a compro- 
mise had been effected by Kate. From what little 
I knew of her I inclined to opine a compromise. 

However, whatever he wore or wherever he wore 
it. Dr. Desmonde was still the same ideal man. 
The dinner could not have been a more brilliant 
entertainment for his guest had champion re- 
searchers broached each theme ; nor could they 
have done it with better practical knowledge than 
his cosmopolitan information afforded. 

In erratic diversity subjects sprang up, upon 
which I was often lacking a single lucid impres- 
sion, but with all of which he was as familiar as 
with the streets of his own city. I risked a state- 
ment concerning the planet Jupiter, to which the 
doctor took exception. Thereafter I was too cau- 
tious to incite correction ; necessarily so, for the 
most part, between Egyptology and sheep-runs, 
electric favoritism and antagonism to vegetation, 
north and south of the equator, constitutional and 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


46 

legislative idiosyncrasies the world over, and a 
host of other topics, equally exasperating to one 
of my limited resources. But the doctor treated 
them all with facts and statistics as an old alchem- 
ist would refer to the contents of a crucible with 
the compounding of which he was absolutely fam- 
iliar. 

Conversation was frequently interspersed with 
exhibitions of infinitesimal Jack. He said grace 
in the most exemplary manner ; drank his cup of 
tea when it was creamed and sweetened to his 
taste but not before ; returned the military salute 
on receiving his empty plate, and replied in intel- 
ligible affirmatives and negatives concerning ar- 
ticles of food which were offered him. 

Occasionally, too, remarks were addressed to 
Kate, standing watchfully behind the doctor’s 
chair ; and her deepening dimples showed her ap- 
preciation of the spirit of attention, irrespective of 
the vituperative Ifetter of the law, as he sometimes 
laid it down. Then, lighting a cigarette. Dr. Des- 
monde remarked : 

“ I feel like a miner who has just struck a fab- 
ulous pocket. It is a glorious thing for an ox- 
ydized cigarette-holder like me to hit upon a man 
who knows something, and is not too conceited 
over it to let another fellow learn.” 

The doctor obviously meant what he said, tre- 
mendous though the mistake which he was ma- 
king ; but knowing my own ignorance and his ap- 
parently unlimited knowledge simple consterna- 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


47 


tion left me powerless to speak. He was fitting 
his cigarette to a curious holder of woven silver 
wire and amber. 

“You would naturally fail to appreciate stagna- 
tion,” he went on. “ For such a man as you 
knocking round the world means keeping the 
world scintillating about you, just as an ocean 
steamer lives in the perpetual glow of its own 
phosphorescent creation. What brilliancy does 
the same sea yield to a scow lying in the bay? 
Wait a bit, my friend,” he added, as I tried to 
speak. “ Sophistry and facts are co-ordinate, but 
they are alternative. The sophistry is yours. 
The facts and the floor are mine. And the fact is 
I have learned more, to-night, than in any month 
of the past year. Of course all properly rounded 
men know something about everything and every- 
thing about something ; but there are precious few 
perfect circles outside of geometry. Mostly men 
and women are very imperfect combinations of 
erratic things, somewhat resembling squares, laid 
criss-cross or any way ; and the fools roll about 
and exhibit themselves under the complaisant im- 
pression that they are ornate spheres. 

“ I would that I too, were rounded by limitless 
true squares, harmoniously laid in an exact circle, 
and, failing that, I would, if I could, be one math- 
ematically perfect combination of just four right- 
angled triangles, neither narrowed by bigotry nor 
elongated by visionary theories ; but the most that 
irrepressible hopefulness and recuperative vitality 


48 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


promise me is the vague prospect that sometime I 
may know something about one thing — my idol, 
my profession. 

“ Knowledge is power, and I might be dangerous 
to the world, if I had what I would of it ; for I real- 
ize its omnipotence as you do not. My first pas- 
sion for medicine came with a longing for power. 
The chapter on drugs which The Man Fosco wrote, 
set my very soul on fire, and kept it burning till I 
held all of my diplomas and degrees. Then I asked 
myself what it all amounted to, and in reply I saw 
the weakness instead of the strength of the science ; 
the crutches and props which supported it ; the er- 
roneous theories misguiding it ; the glare of chi- 
canery giving it a false glamour, and the cresset 
burned farther beyond me than ever. Oh, I say, 
this is stupidity. Let’s go up in the tower and set- 
tle our dispute about Jupiter, and then try a tramp 
around the billiard table for an hour. What do 
you say to that, Jack.^” 

Jack tossed his head with a delightful, muffled 
sneeze of approbation and the doctor continued : 
*‘Up you go, then. Into the tower. The tower ! 
Go on ! Show Mr. Willard how you are going to 
climb the golden stair, someday, to the happy 
hunting ground, where good little dogs have silver 
tails.” 

I have quoted Dr. Desmonde fully, not through 
the remotest thought that anyone — least of all any- 
one who knows me — could possibly credit me as he 
did, but because the general tendency was so 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


49 


characteristically indicative of the man ; of his un- 
varying modesty and morbidly overestimating gen- 
erosity ; and chiefly because his words expressed a 
fixed conviction concerning our two selves, in com- 
parison ; an impression which never forsook the 
dear, deluded fellow, through our entire intercourse. 

Verily I was to him less than a child at the feet 
of Gamaliel ; and in time I lived in mortal terror 
that he would find it out ; for, later on, his very 
life hung, sometimes, upon nothing more substan- 
tial than that panegyric blunder. It lasted its day 
and served its purpose, however, and now, dear 
friend, be disabused. I am not one tithe the 
learned and clever fellow you considered me. The 
labor of love depending so on that undue esteem, 
was neither lost nor thrown away, but it is finished ; 
and no one could be gladder than I to assume his 
proper place. You will love me just the same. I 
am sure of it as I am that I shall love you while I 
have it in me to appreciate aad honor the best and 
noblest man on earth. 

It was not so much a blind error of judgment 
with you, either — so much as a way you have, 
always to invent and then magnify good in another, 
and minify, till you obliterate the bad. What a 
monarch you’d be, forsooth, if others did the same 
by you. But we were starting up the marble stairs 
to the observatory. 

Jack went first, then the doctor, carrying a 
lighted taper, and I followed. The light fell 
strongest on the tan haunches of the tailless atom 


50 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


in advance. The rest of him was shadowed and 
foreshortened almost out of sight. His hind feet 
went up one at a time, with a slow, deliberate mo- 
tion, full of dignity and moderation, more after the 
fashion of a man than of any dog I ever saw upon 
the stairs — especially so small a dog. And withal 
there was something strangely familiar about it. 

The doctor being rather portly and presumably 
at his ease, was climbing in a leisurely way which 
emphasized the slight halt in his gait that I had 
already noticed, and when I glanced at him and 
back at Jack, I stopped where I stood, convulsed 
with laughter. As I live the polished little tan gen- 
tleman was perceptibly limping on his left hind 
foot. 

The doctor paused and looked back at me. 
Jack paused, in precisely the same attitude, and 
looked back at the doctor. Even the facial expres- 
sion of the two appeared identical. Apology or 
explanation were impossible. I simply clutched 
the rail with one hand and with the other pointed 
to Jack. The taper lit up the doctor’s face in 
strange illusion, or there was something most pecu- 
liar in his smile as he remarked : 

That bally little beggar actually thinks that he 
is Desmonde and that I’m his dog. And now and 
again I hit upon an argument much inclining me 
to his theory. I am convinced, at least, that he 
would make the better doctor whether or no I’d 
make the better dog. Eh, Jack ?” Jack answered 
in a three volume octavo, all bound in one digni- 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


51 


fied sneeze, whereupon the doctor stamped his 
foot exclaiming: “Conceited idiot! Go on up- 
stairs. You have audacity enough to make a suc- 
cess of yourself in the pulpit. Go on, I say, or I’ll 
step on your tail. You can’t talk. And talk is all 
that there is to-day to the glorious science of medi- 
cine.” 

Starting on again, the doctor continued : 

“ The little brute doesn’t believe in drugs under 
any circumstances ; wherein he is right, too, in nine 
cases out of ten ; which is better than any other 
living doctor can boast. But when it comes to 
talk I have him. Talk ! The sum and substance 
of the grandest science known to men.” 

Here the doctor stopped abruptly and turned 
quite about. Jack did the same. 

“ Why, the other night a chemist put up morphia 
where I prescribed aconite,” he said. “ I told the 
patient that the dose would throw him into a pro- 
fuse perspiration and might result in his being 
wakeful, but that he was to keep himself well cov- 
ered and remain in bed till I saw him. Early in 
the morning the chemist came to me,' trembling 
for his life, to tell me of his mistake, and I bolted 
for the corpse. Now by all the gods and little 
fishes, the man had done precisely as I told him, 
irrespective of the drug. He had litterally satu- 
rated his bed with perspiration and, with a beam- 
ing smile, assured me that but for a little lack of 
sleep he was right as a bank. H’m ! Only for 
pitying the chemist I should have told him that he 


52 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


had swallowed poison enough to turn him inside 
out and kill him twice over ; and but for the chem- 
ists, again, I think I should open a school to prom- 
ulgate the theory that a solution of nothing in dis- 
tilled water, and a good tongue, is all a physician 
requires to float himself into fame and fortune, if 
he doesn’t make a mess for himself in surgery. Go 
on upstairs. Jack ! What are you waiting for ?” 

So the doctor and his little double went on 
again, and by some unaccountable fortune we 
found proof of the accuracy of my random asser- 
tion concerning Jupiter. 

“ Good old Jupiter,” the doctor exclaimed, and, 
bless his unique identity, he was happy as a child 
with fresh lollies that I was right. 

Truly I hardly more than knew your name. 
Great Jupiter. Whatever possessed me to venture 
an assertion concerning you is past my compre- 
hension, and of all things whatever possessed that 
assertion to be verifiable. In cold reality. Dr. 
Desmonde had more about the heavens at his 
tongue’s end than I had ever heard and forgotten. 
But it was only one of many incidents which oc- 
curred to strengthen his false estimate. 

Then we went to the billiard room where the 
doctor was making a trial stroke when a peculiar 
bell sounded. It was soft and musical, but pene- 
trating and persistent. It was the office bell, and 
I discovered, later, the eccentric quality of that 
curious, uncanny murmur, to rouse one from the 
soundest sleep, no matter how well he became ac- 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


53 


customed to it or to what part of the house he re- 
treated to escape it. Jack was up in an instant, 
his ears professionally erect, his head thoughtfully 
on one side, his eyes looking dreamily into space. 
Also the doctor.'’ 

As Kate’s step sounded in the hall below, the 
doctor went to the stairs and spoke, while Jack sat 
behind him and barked. 

“ I say, Kate,” he called. “ Lying lips are an 
abomination ; nevertheless, I am dead or out of 
town. I will not see a patient to-night, no matter 
who it is. Look here. Jack, you close that safety 
valve of yours. Here I’m sending word to a pa- 
tient that you are out, to give you a quiet game of 
billiards with your friend, while you are doing your 
best to make yourself appear a cold-blooded liar. 
Ah — Kate, if it’s someone who wants to be killed 
in a hurry and can’t wait for me, just send him to 
— to — oh, send him to Chandler. It’ll do him 
worlds of good.” 

Taking up his cue again the doctor muttered : 
“ That fellow Chandler lives on crow-bait, to keep 
nap on his coat. He has a good brain cavity and 
there must be some fit corpuscles in it, but the 
quixotic fellow devotes his entire time to berating 
me. It is an acknowledged adjunct of the profes- 
sion, I know ; but Chandler has got it very bad ; 
so bad that if he doesn’t watch out he’ll be a 
celebrated physician before he is sufficiently 
matured to sustain the honor with deceptive equa- 
nimity. We call Bagdad the creation of the 


54 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


Caliphs, but the way those same caliphs created it 
was by pulling down the Bagdad of the days of 
Sardanapalus, for the blocks with which to build 
their own. It’s the same with medical professions, 
to-day. We do not build up practices by legiti- 
mate quarrying and honest reputations. We 
simply whack away at some other fellow’s corner- 
stone, until his building falls. Then we pick up 
as many pieces as we can. 

“ Oh confusion take that tube,” he gasped, 
throwing down his cue when on the point of mak- 
ing a fancy stroke, as a whistle blew, close to 
where I was standing. “ Didn’t I tell Kate I was 
dead ? Why should she try to resurrect me.” 

Well,” he called, lifting a tube so near me 
that I could hear Kate’s voice as easily as his own. 
The reply came back: 

“ It’s old widow Siddon, doctor. She has 
fallen down stairs and hurt herself.” 

“Most people do, when they fall down stairs,” 
muttered the doctor. “ Tell her it’s only the 
natural result of the operation.” 

“ Well, I told the boy you were away, doctor,” 
Kate called. “ But he’s crying his eyes out and 
don’t know what to do. It’s no use sending him 
to Dr. Chandler ; for his grandmother can’t pay 
anything and Dr. Chandler won’t go without.” 

“ Well, go tell the boy that you’ve changed your 
mind,” the doctor replied. “ Say I will be there 
in five minutes. Tell Sam to have the yellow 
mare in the cart, in thirty seconds. Tell him not 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


55 


to stop to shave, for I’ll drive myself — I’ll drive 
the mare, anyway. Then get out my accident 
case and an extra top-coat for Mr. Willard. He’s 
going with me. Oh perdition seize you, Kate, I 
hear the telephone. Whoever it is say I’ll stop on 
the way back from Siddon’s. Look sharp, now, 
for I’m half way down stairs already.” 

Dropping the tube, with a sigh, the doctor 
lighted a fresh cigarette, picked up his cue and 
deliberately made the stroke he had been plan- 
ning. 

He watched the balls till they were still, then 
turning to me, as though an entirely new idea had 
struck him, said : 

“ I say, Willard, I’ve got to go to the other end 
of the world, to finish up an old woman who has 
made a failure of spoiling herself, falling down 
stairs. There’s an empty seat in the trap and an 
empty top-coat in the hall. Will you get yourself 
into them and come along, or will you harmonize 
yourself with something here, till I get back.” 

Now Muckross, alone, was like pure silver, but 
the burnish was gone when Dr. Desmonde was not 
there. 

I felt, then, that it would be so ; but I did 
not fully realize it till later, for I went with him, 
that night, behind the yellow mare. 


56 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


CHAPTER V. 

The night was black and blustering but it was 
Saturday ; and be a night never so black and blus- 
tering, if it is Saturday, those streets are sure to be 
crowded ; not often with vehicles larger than per- 
ambulators, but always with people, their babies 
and their dogs. The yellow mare, too, was high- 
spirited and the doctor in a reckless mood. 

He drove through those dark and crowded streets 
like — shades of Colonel Warden come and say it 
for me — like the very devil let loose. But Jack 
was with us, to the salvation, I am sure, of many a 
fragment of that Wandering crowd. Lurch about 
as we would he sat poised upon my knee, looking 
steadily into the blackness of that corporation 
moonlight night, and filling the air with an unin- 
terrupted series of sharp, shrill yelps. 

Everyone knew that bark as well as they knew 
the doctor, for it was exercised every day, at the 
window of the brougham, and when they heard it 
in the darkness they knew what was coming and 
discreetly made way. 

Jack always called professionally with the doc- 
tor, unless he rode his bicycle or walked. He 
would walk to the theater or a concert ; but as a 
cardinal principle of life, with him from his youth 
up, he would not budge, professionally, except on 
wheels. If the doctor so much as left him on the 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


5; 


pavement, to secure a bit of exercise in a run for a 
block after the brougham, no matter how he was 
called or coaxed or how far he was from home, he 
would always turn, in dignified disgust, and walk 
deliberately back to Muckross, rather than trot a 
rod, like a dog, behind a coach. 

“ Confound old women, anyway,*' the doctor 
muttered, as a wheel bumped savagely against the 
curb in turning. “ They haven’t the remotest re- 
gard for law. Old widow Siddon ought to know 
enough about gravitation no^to go experimenting 
with it at this time of night. It is the third time 
that I have been dragged into these slums since 
daylight this morning, all for some foolish defiance 
of law.” 

It was just a bit of irrelevant grumbling, to re- 
lieve a general congestion, but it came to me as a 
pleasant comment on the man that twice, already, 
had given his time and talents to help the help- 
less in that wretched district, and that a poor old 
woman could command, on such a night, what had 
cost Lord Roebert a fortune and endless impor- 
, tunity. 

A knot of men was dimly visible where we drew 
up and the doctor called: “Will one of you fel- 
lows hold my horse ?” to which a chorus of voices 
replied ; “ I will. Dr. Desmonde,” and Jack and I 

followed him into a scantily-lighted and furnished 
room ; where an old woman lay groaning in bed, a 
younger one sat sobbing beside her, and a boy 


58 


DESMONDE, M, D. 


Stood with his hat in his hand, still panting, from 
his run for the doctor. 

Dr. Desmonde motioned the young woman to 
make room for him and took her place. He held 
the patient’s right hand in his left and drew his 
right hand gently across her fo-rehead. The groans 
ceased, almost at once, and the hand moved to her 
shoulder and then to her side. In less than two 
minutes he sat erect, drew a deep breath, shivered, 
and taking a prescription book from his pocket 
wrote with the gold pencil he used in the cathedral. 
Then he tore two slips from the book, handing 
them to the boy, with a sovereign, saying : 

“ Go to the nearest chemist, lad, and have those 
two put up. When you get back you can keep the 
change.” Then he turned the old woman, gently, 
on the bed, and kneeling over her gave her arm a 
rather savage wrench, causing the young woman to 
utter an hysteric shriek. Looking over his shoulder 
he asked, sharply : “ Well, what is the matter 

with you ?” 

“ Nothing, doctor. It’s only mother,” the wo- 
man sobbed, wringing her hands. 

“ Do you think that racket will help her any ?” 

“ No, doctor,” she whispered, shaking her head. 

“ Then stop it,” he remarked, and she obeyed. 

A moment iater he said: *‘Your mother put 
her shoulder out. I had to set it. But it didn’t 
hurt her. She was sound asleep and even between 
us we didn’t wake her up. She has bruised her 
side, too, but no bones are broken. Now listen. 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


59 


Your son will bring a plaster and a bottle. Put 
the plaster on there, where it is red ; sticky side 
down. From the bottle bathe her shoulder and 
rub it, with your hand, for half an hour. Then 
bind on a cloth, wet from the bottle, and go to bed 
yourself and go to sleep. Your mother will not 
wake up till I come in the morning. Under- 
stand ?” 

She caught his hand and kissed it ; which I 
think was more to Dr. Desmonde than double 
Lord Roebert’s fee, though his only comment as 
we drove away, was a repetition of his muttered 
imprecation : Confound old women, anyway.” 

The other call was at one of the finest residences 
in the city where, handing me the reins, he said : 
‘Tf you don’t mind waiting in the trap I’ll be gone 
but a minute. It is only a nervous woman who 
wants her husband to pay me two guineas. If 
there’d been a ball at Government House to- 
night, I should have gone without my guineas ; so 
much does the glorious science of medicine re- 
semble Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay, 
stopping a hole to keep the wind away.” 

As we drove back to Muckross he said : “ Kate 
will have some supper waiting, I suppose, and after 
we have properly disarranged ourselves in deference 
to her mistaken thoughtfulness, I want to show 
you my professional rooms, and ask a favor.” 

So transpired a discovery that the marble stairs 
leading up from the main hall led also down from 
it; a fact secreted* by padded, self-closing doors. 


6o 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


To attempt a brief description of the rooms to 
which those stairs conducted me, would be an in- 
sult to the mind conceiving them. To do it prop- 
erly would require a volume in itself. Choosing 
the least of two evils this is, briefly, what I found : 
The foundations of Muckross rest upon a solid 
ledge of rock, high above the street. Beneath is 
a series of subterranean chambers, excavated from 
the ledge, extending from the wall, on the side 
street, under the lawn and practically under the 
entire house. The office entrance is apparently a 
gate in the wall, but in reality it opens upon a 
broad vestibule and that, in turn, on an ample hall. 
First, on either side, are large waiting-rooms. Be- 
hind them are consulting rooms, then operating 
rooms, and beyond these there is a chemical labora- 
tory and one devoted to electricity. Then there are 
workshops, an engine room and dynamo, and back 
of all a den. The rooms are connected with each 
other and with the hall by double, padded doors. 
Floors, walls, and ceilings are of the unbroken na- 
tive ledge, polished almost like porphyry. 

The rooms are constantly lighted by subdued 
electricity and heated and ventilated by hot-air 
blasts, sent through borings in the walls, so that 
the stone itself is always warm and dry, the tern- 
perature regulated to a degree, and fresh air in 
constant circulation. They are furnished with 
everything conceivable adapted to their require- 
ments and after I had once rapidly passed through 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


6i 


them I no longer wondered that the house above 
was devoid of anything professional. 

Last of all we entered the laboratory devoted to 
electricity, and by the fire in the doctor’s eyes, by 
the smile upon his lips, by the involuntary work- 
ing of his fingers, by the gentle, loving touches he 
bestowed on the delicate and complicated instru- 
ments — devices of his own and frequently the 
work of his own fingers — it was easy to see where 
the treasure and the heart of science lay. 

Intricate and wonderful as they were, however, 
the chiefest marvel was the clear, brief, simple 
way in which the master explained them. It was 
like a child prattling of the paltry mechanism of 
his favorite toy, comprehended at a single glance 
— like a god revealing the infinite secrets of the 
universe that, being revealed, were still as far from 
my comprehension as the east is from the west. 
It was then that I began to realize what I had 
undertaken when I came that thousand miles and 
more to know this man of many parts, moving in 
so many orbits, the signal brilliant of such different 
constellations ; known to so many only as they 
knew the barking of his dog and the brass plate 
on his gate ; something to be bantered in jest by 
them, because he was good-natured ; to be appealed 
to in want, because he was generous ; to be slan- 
dered in secret, because he was successful ; to be 
trusted in sickness, because he could heal them ; to 
be scoffed at in health, because he was unlike them 
and they could not understand him. 


62 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


There was a young man about the rooms who 
was evidently a kind of night custodian and en- 
gineer, and directing him to bring two cups of 
coffee to the den the doctor unlocked and opened 
the last door for me. The fact may seem simple 
to chronicle, but, in reality, Dr. Desmonde carried 
only that one key. It was made of gold, tipped 
with steel, and fastened to his watch-chain. I 
never knew of another door or desk or drawer in 
Muckross being locked ; but that door was never 
opened except when Dr. Desmonde turned the 
key. 

He touched a button, just inside the door, and 
the room was flooded with delicately tinted light. 
It was a small chamber, excavated entirely through 
the opening for that one door. Otherwise the walls 
were only broken by borings for heat and ventila- 
tion, tubes and wires. It differed from the other 
rooms only in being circular, with a domed ceiling. 
In the centre of the room was a beautifully inlaid 
ebony and onyx table, and, alone upon the table, 
stood the only ornament in the den. 

It was a marvelous miniature, modeled after the 
famous bronze gates of the baptistry of San Gio- 
vanni, in Florence. It comprised the gates and 
the surrounding arch, standing, in all, about nine 
inches high. To the most intricate bas-relief it 
was a perfect, microscopic copy, wrought in gold. 

When the coffee was brought, remembering 
what I had seen and heard, and that since we met 
the doctor had not touched so much as a glass of 


DESMONDS, M. D. 


63 ' 

wine, I remarked that I hoped he was not abstain- 
ing out of any sense of courtesy. Instantly he 
replied : 

“ It would be a depraved courtesy if I should 
suffer without your receiving compensative benefit ; 
and I do not take you for a crank who could find 
pleasure in the simple fact that I was depriving 
myself. The fact is drinking is much oftener the 
result of artificial than of natural instigation. It’s 
a kind of unconscious hypnotism, don’t you know. 

If you had been a drinker we should have consumed 
any amount of liquor, by this, and still be as dry 
as parched camels. On the contrary, you’ve 
rather hypnotized the idea out of me.” 

“ Your own powers are quite too strong for you 
to receive hypnotic suggestion from others,” I re- 
marked, at which the doctor looked across the 
table with a searching, half frightened glance. 

After a moment he simply repeated : “ My 

powers ?” 

“ Don’t take the term too technically, if you have 
some other name,” I said. “ I am utterly ignor- 
ant even of the nomenclature of the mysterious — 
ah, sciences.” 

Dr. Desmonde had been watching me closely. 
Now he threw his feet over a rest and replied : 

“You used that word ^sciences ’ out of courtesy, 
lest I should be an adept of some kind, and be 
sensitive. But I am not an adept of any kind and I 
am not sensitive. There can be no science of the 
mysterious. There can be only theory. I have 


64 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


never read extensively, even of those, for I am 
afraid of dissertations. Words that are well put 
together have a tremendous power over an un- 
settled mind. A theory, well stated, is almost as 
influential as an axiom, and vastly more pliable. 

“ Take our own ancient history, for example : 
The Jews, in the wilderness, had left behind them 
in Egypt, a people who had history, mythology, 
and law. They demanded of Moses similiar 
causes and effects concerning themselves. After 
due chicanery in the mountain he came down with 
tables of stone on which a code was cut, and to 
give it force he ascribed the engraving to the fin- 
ger of J-ehova. 

“ It is worthy of passing note that, till they en- 
tered the mountains of Syria, no such God as Je- 
hova had ever been mentioned to the Jews. It is 
not a proper name. It simply means ‘ The god of 
the hills.’ The Egyptians, who had no hills, wor- 
shiped the Nile god and the two gods (good and 
evil) of the plains. That code of laws was old 
classics, at the time, and was taught to Moses by 
his Egyptian masters, in the Temple of the Sun. 
He simply added the prelude, justifying its claim 
to emanation from Jehova : ‘ I am the Lord thy 
God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt.’ 

“ The mythological record comprised in the 
opening chapters of Genesis, he plagiarized, almost 
verbatim, even to the plural deities of creation, 
from the ancient history of Babylon. Discovery 
was impossible. The text-books of Heliopolis 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


65 


were forever inaccessible. Only the priests, among 
them, could read at all, and they had but a poor 
smattering of Hebrew. It was a diplomatic neces- 
sity forced by the clamors of ignorance ; and I 
can imagine the one educated mortal in that bar- 
baric horde smiling, incredulously, at some vision 
of enlightened nations, four thousand years to 
come, rejecting the verities of science, because 
they failed to agree with the fairy story he had 
borrowed from Babylonish mythology ; and pro- 
claiming that the one and only way to future hapr 
piness and escape from eternal fire lay along his 
theft from the Persian bar ; when he himself, and 
his people, long after him, had no conception of 
any future state at all. 

“ Ignorance searches just as eagerly for cause, 
to-day, and as easily accepts more skillfully pre- 
pared and promulgated theories, elaborated for the 
benefit of more enlightened reason. 

“There are effects, real, positive effects from 
hypnotism, mind-reading, clairvoyance and the 
rest. There is actual healing, by a host of mysteri- 
ous processes, where science has utterly failed. 
There is astral projection and materialization 
which is neither illusion, hallucination nor fraud. 
No fool could live in the world, to-day, and deny 
it. Only a foolish wise man would try to explain 
it away. But the most dangerous fool is he who 
feels constrained to lay a foundation of theories, 
to account for what he only knows as accidents 


66 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


probably following certain incidents, and upon that 
foundation builds an ostensible science. 

“ Sooner or later all this phantasmagoric muddle 
will find its way to the cradle, for scientists to 
nurse and study and finally understand ; and it is 
my opinion that, when it is fully delivered, we shall 
find it not only a legitimate offspring of law but a 
very closely allied twin to electricity. 

“ Already I have instruments that will accom- 
plish with electricity what hypnotists claim within 
their power; and do it with accuracy and certainty, 
irrespective of the patient’s antagonism or co-oper- 
ation. Life is pretty much all suggestion, anyway. 
Patients are killed and cured by suggestion with no 
reference to mysterious arts. Imagination works 
wholly on suggestion and often works wonders. 
Hypnotism only heightens the power of suggestion, 
when it can gain control. It lies in the possibili- 
ties of electricity to make the control inevitable 
and change the suggestion to command. Thus, as 
hypnotism suggests an absurdity to a rational 
mind, and at once it assumes the proportions of a 
fact, the rational will some day be suggested to the 
abnormal mind with the same result. I say, am I 
tiring you ?” 

“ By no means,” I exclaimed. “ I have given 
these mysteries very little attention because I have 
always approached them in the wrong way. One 
hears of such marvelous things ; but what one really 
sees is so well premeditated and enveloped in such 
possibilities for deception that to the natural seep- 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


67 


tic — I am a natural sceptic — doubt and disgust are 
pure spontaneity. Your crediting astral projection, 
for instance, astonished me. On the steamer, per 
force of nothing else to read, I looked through a 
book composed of accounts of phenomenal appear- 
ances; and it so utterly antagonized me that I 
even abandoned a vague idea that such things 
sometimes did occur, where people were dying far 
away from friends.” 

“ Well, there is such a thing, Willard,” Dr. Des- 
monde replied, and it is by no means restricted to 
the death-bed. Indeed, I believe it is as really in 
the power of everyone, if he only understood, and 
as simple as the faculty of wagging his ears, for ex- 
ample. 

“ See ? I can wag my ear. Can you wag yours ? 
Well, you could if you only knew how ; but though 
I can do it I can’t for the life of me tell you how to. 
Incidentally, I have a little machine out there 
which can be set to wag your ears for you, and 
teach you in that way, if you ever care to learn. 

“ It is much the same with this projecting. I 
have happened to hit upon the way it is accom- 
plished. I believe that it is through some instiga- 
tion of electricity, and I am sure, at least, that it is 
not an occult mystery, or sacredly vested in Thibe- 
tan adepts or advanced theosophists. 

“ You’re smiling inwardly, in spite of external 
civility. But let me demonstrate. Kate is doubt- 
less abed and asleep, dreaming of her lost Erin. 
Her room is two floors above us. Outside her 


68 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


door is a frame of bells and tubes. One of them 
connects with the tube on the right, there. You 
can reach it from where you sit. I think that I can 
call her to it.” 

To emphasize the wagging of his ear, the doctor 
had hung his glasses over it. They were still there. 
As he spoke, he paused in the act of raising his 
cup of coffee to his lips. He was also raising his 
other hand to remove his cigarette, but instead 
drew it slowly across his forehead : then closed his 
eyes with his fingers while he puffed two or three 
dense clouds of smoke. 

There was nothing uncanny about it, yet I felt 
an uncomfortable chill, as though the room had 
suddenly grown cold, and in less than thirty 
seconds a sleepy voice startled me, like a ghost, 
calling through the tube : 

“ What is it, doctor ? I am here.” 

“ Tell her to call me at nine in the morning, and 
ask her how she knew I wanted her,” the doctor 
said, only moving to drink his coffee. 

“It’s just an old trick of the doctor’s,” Kate re- 
plied. “ I’m such a nervous thing, and have so 
many starts from night bells, that, when he wants 
me, he has a way of coming and standing by the 
bed till I wake up easy, and then saying : ‘ Go to 
the den tube, Kate,’ or whatever it is he wants. 
At first the remedy was worse than the disease, 
but I’ve got so used to it now that I’m wishing the 
whole lot of his patients might do the same.” 

“ It’s a shame to keep you up, Kate,” I remarked. 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


69 


“but Tm very interested in this, and before you 
go to sleep again and forget, do you mind telling 
me bow the doctor looked — how he was dressed, 
you know ?” 

“ I don’t know as I could, sir,” Kate answered. 
“ I was so sound asleep and he seemed in an awful 
hurry. I just jumped for the tube. Oh, I do re- 
member, he had a cup in his hand — not a glass, a 
teacup. And there was something bright dangling 
on his ear. Of course, he was smoking.” 

“ Well, good-night to you, Kate,” I said, and 
dropped the tube. The doctor put one foot to the 
floor and turned so that his arms rested on the table. 

“There, my friend,” he said, “you have seen 
something in the line of physical projection that, 
at least, was unpremeditated and too simple for 
deception.” He raised his hand to prevent my 
protesting. “ But don’t let it convert you to any- 
thing. For my part, I believe as little in the 
mystery as you did when you read the stories on 
the steamer. I believe that it all occurs through 
the unconscious manipulation of some ingredient 
of electricity — for mind you, it is by no means cer- 
tain, that what we call electric fluid is not a com- 
bination of energies, one of which can be, is, in 
fact, used as a vehicle of thought. 

“ By accident and resultant investigation, I dis- 
covered what you call my ‘ powers.’ When I was 
a boy, I found that by some kind of mental contor- 
tions I could either calm or irritate animals. Then 
I discovered how to make my school-fellows think 


70 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


and do idiotic things. It amused me then and the 
reverse of it interests me now — when it enables me 
to make the absurd and idiotic sensible. But it is 
only a hint at a grand possibility. Hypnotism is 
a freakish, unreliable, weak-kneed hack, at the best. 
There is an infinitely better cob for going over the 
same ground and going goodness knows how much 
faster and farther. I know it, Willard, for I have 
saddled and bridled him already. I have ridden 
him on ordinary roads, only I haven’t learned to 
manage him on the race-course and the cross- 
country hunt, where he will be of the best value. 
I have taught him to perform the feats of hypno- 
tism better than any expert. But while he does 
what I require of him he does other things which 
I do not require, and I am convinced that electri- 
city is really a pair, at least, and possibly, even 
more. 

“ There is something in the current which car- 
ries life and something which carries death. And 
I believe there is something, too, which carries 
thought. For example : Kate saw me, to-night, 
even to the cup in my hand and the glasses on my 
ear ; yet she saw me standing up, while I was 
really sitting down. She even appreciated a senti- 
ment of unusual haste. Now my thought was 
certainly burdened with a desire for promptness, in 
a natural pride to make a good exhibition ; also by 
the cup of coffee, from which I was on the point of 
drinking, and by the glasses, which from their odd 
position distracted me a little, and the cigarette 


desmonde, m. d. 


7 ^ 


requiring limited attention ; while, as usual, I dis- 
tinctly thought of myself not as sitting down but 
as standing before her, delivering the message. 

“ These were the cardinal points engaging my 
mind and they were all impressed on Kate. If she 
had not been in bed, whatever it was that went 
from me would have found her and delivered the 
message just the same. If she had not understood 
it would have repeated. Sometimes, when she 
has asked other questions, they too have been 
answered ; all proving, beyond a doubt, that 
actual, active intelligence went from me, in an 
expression correctly intelligible both to her eyes 
and ears. But nothing of it all came back to me. 

I have no consciousness of having seen her, any 
more than if I had sent the message by letter. I 
did not know she was awake until I heard her 
voice at the tube. 

“ Obviously there is a vehicle of thought, which 
the mind can utilize ; but as its perceptive and 
receptive faculties are in the machinery of the 
brain, unless the brain is also transported or a re- * 
turn connection established by the other mind, 
nothing can be brought back. 

“ If the vehicle is electricity we must know it. 

It will help us. If electricity can be disintegrated 
we must do it. Then we shall be able to control 
the mind for moral motives also, through the 
brain, more easily and accurately than we now 
control the blood through the heart.” 

“But doctor,” I remarked, “the power which 


72 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


you already possess is bewildering, without asking 
more.” 

It is unreliably useful,” he said, with a sigh. 
“ It saved widow Siddon a night of suffering, and 
by feeling what she felt, it saved my relying on her 
tongue to tell me how badly she was hurt. Her 
imagination would easily have found symptoms 
that would have kept me awake all night, too, fret- 
ting lest she was dying from some internal injury. 
But it is only a guide to what can be and shall be 
better done with instruments.” 

“ Do you mean that real insanity can be cured 
by such a process as you think possible ?” I 
asked. 

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “ Every- 
thing that reasons is insane,” he said. “ Insanity 
simply means of unsound mind ; that is, of personal 
convictions which are at variance with accepted 
theories — and I defy a man to be an independent 
thinker and not be at variance with accepted 
theories. The abnormal conditions filling our 
retreats are not insanity, they are diseased brains ; 
and nine-tenths of them, at least, are within the 
reach of the possibilities of electricity. The mere 
checking of a pain by hypnotism is little compared 
with that. The chemist can check it with a pill, 
' when brandy-and-soda fails, and it is not always 
safe to check a pain; for pain is nature’s danger 
signal. Mental or physical it means that a law has 
been broken, and pain or no pain the broken law 
will have either vengeance or repair. 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


73 


It is simply this way : each individual mind 
can treat the body better, infinitely better than 
drugs, if it can be rightly and surely guided 
through a sound brain. I want to reach that ope- 
rating room of the mind. I am doing it imperfectly, 
already, but it can be done perfectly. 

“ The fanatic leader of our Salvation Army, here, 
was an old jail-bird ; a man with whom evil was a 
mania ; a disease so well developed that he could 
think of nothing else. I caught him, one night, 
carrying away my silver plate. When I stopped 
him he tried to murder me. See that scar 
on my throat ? He did it. But I got him 
down and once I had him I felt justified in trying 
an experiment with an instrument which had 
been waiting for months for a first victim. It was 
the same instrument that later saved Lord Roebert’s 
daughter. It isn’t perfect yet, and cannot be till I 
know how to be rid of the danger and overdoing 
that threatens every operation wdth electricity as I 
am now using it. That is where the value of dis- 
integration lies, for me. However, it transformed 
that man. I have since learned that in his youth 
he was a ranting Methodist, which accounts for his 
mind now going back into those neglected 
passages. 

‘‘The mind, the life in us which is not physical, 
call it soul or spirit or what you will, has but the 
brain in which to work. Through the brain senses 
it obtains its information. In the brain archives it 
stores its facts. In the brain workshops it pro- 


74 . 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


duces thought. Through the brain signal stations 
it issues its commands. For all that it receives to 
work upon, the brain is alone responsible. For 
the results which the body accomplishes the brain 
is its only vehicle. Just as the blood flows freely 
through a sound body the mind works through a 
sound brain, to the extent of its development. 
But you might as well expect the blood to volun- 
tarily keep away from diseased lungs, giving them 
quiet to heal, as to expect the mind to desert the 
congested and chronically irritated channels of the 
brain simply because its increased action there only 
increases the disease. The blood flows through 
the veins according to nature’s unintelligent and 
immutable necessity ; and when a law has been 
broken it still follows the same dictates, though 
the result may be danger and death. The mind 
operates analogously through the brain. If its 
workshops are supplied with improper implements, 
if the facts in its laboratory are wrong, if its signals 
are deranged, its information bureaus tainted and 
congested, its channels diseased and abnormal, 
what can the mind produce but error, absurdity or 
crime, in constantly increasing quantity and qual- 
ity, while in the very act of following laws which, 
in the sound brain, would be productive of the very 
best results. Sooner, ten thousand times sooner 
send a man to hell for walking lame when he has 
a broken leg than condemn a soul for criminal per- 
formances through a diseased brain. 

“ Set another mind to work in that brain and 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


75 


everything indicates that the results would be the 
same. Give that same mind a repaired, healed brain 
to work in, and instantly, even its remotest ten- 
dencies to error will disappear. 

“ This is nothing new. Every thinking mortal 
knows it, and yet — Christianity ! 

“ Take that boy in the cathedral : He had too 
small a cavity for the brain. The outer cells of 
thought were clogged till the mind could not work 
there at all ; so they called him an idiot. Bosh ! 
I brought him back with me. He’s up at the 
hospital, now, seeing, hearing, smelling, thinking ; 
and as soon as he has learned something he will be 
reasoning ; a reasoning idiot, all for giving the 
mind a chance to show itself. His mind was not 
idiotic. A mind never is idiotic, nor insane, nor 
criminal. It cannot be. It is always capable 
just to the extent of the brain’s limitations and al- 
ways, of necessity, deflected by the brain’s deflec- 
tions ; and unless that boy’s mind, or soul, was re- 
sponsible for its inaction, the soul of the criminal 
is not responsible for its action. 

“ The brain is the workshop, where everything 
is produced, and the brain can be treated with 
absolute safety and assurance ; it can be repaired, 
healed and rectified, the moment — ” 

The doctor’s earnest conversation had given me 
little leisure to exercise any sense but hearing. 
Once or twice I had glanced, for an instant, to- 
ward the beautiful gem , in gold beside me — from 


76 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


its position and solitude so evidently the sacred 
treasure, if not, indeed, the idol of Muckross. 

Each quick glance had fascinated me more till 
the inactive sense of touch involuntarily went out 
to it and one finger gently moved over the minute 
figures. Only for occasional instants did I real- 
ized that I was touching it. My eyes and thoughts 
were fixed upon the face across the onyx table. 
It was on fire with inspiration. 

I fancied a tiny projection moved a bit, instiga- 
ting an increased pressure. In reality it was a secret 
spring, cunningly devised, releasing certain panels 
in the golden gates, and they swung open, under the 
arch. But they moved so gently, as became such 
exquisite workmanship, that I was not conscious 
that anything had occurred, till the sentence was 
broken on the doctor’s lips, the glow of inspiration 
gone from his face, and, quick and awful as the 
blackness following a vivid flash of lightning on a 
stormy night, the features had darkened, in one 
terrible contortion, into the face which I saw in 
the concert hall. 

My heart stood still. I could not even breathe 
as I wrenched my eyes from his and looked, 
through the open gates, upon the flowing hair, the 
broad white brow, the deep blue eyes, proud lips 
and perfect throat of an angelic face painted on 
ivory. 

My hand was cold, and trembled as I forced it 
to close the gates. ‘‘ I must have touched some 
spring,” I said, “ while unconsciously admiring the 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


77 


masterly work of the Florentine gold-beater who 
copied for you the great triumph of Giovanni. 
I’ve often sat on Angelo’s bench, in the Palazzo 
Duomo, by the campanili and grand gates of the 
baptistry.” 

Then drawing my hand slowly from the golden 
horror, hiding the angelic friend, and following my 
finger with my eyes, hoping, but not daring to as- 
sure myself by a glance that he might be doing 
the same, I spoke of the patient, slant-eyed work- 
men of Cathay, who had inlaid the onyx in the 
ebony table ; calling" his attention to the subtle 
curves of the embryo of life, so cunningly wrought 
into all of the best productions of that most re- 
markable realm. 

From the outer edge of the table I pointed to 
the rug at our feet, relating a personal adventure 
among the Damascus weavers. Then across the 
polished floor, with a tale of the great excavated 
Caves of Elephanta, near Bombay, and the temple 
in the Sphynx of Gheiza, and on to the door, aptly 
suggesting my departure. Only when I opened 
the inner door of the vestibule, to find the outer 
chamber flooded with sunlight, I forgot myself and 
ceased speaking. The doctor took my hand and 
said : 

“ It is a good omen if the night has passed more 
quickly than you thought. I pray you remember 
it in considering the favor I was to ask, which is : 
that, if you can make it convenient, as a boon and 
a blessing to me, you will bring your traps and call 


78 


DESMONDS, M D. 


Muckross your home, as long as you can remain in 
the city. Think it over. There is time enough. 
And now good-bye, old chap. A good sleep to 
you and a good appetite.” 


CHAPTER VI. 

Exuberance of joy over the facilities which 
this invitation afforded followed me even into sleep ; 
but there it worked itself into a dream so contrary 
and so grave of import as to turn me quite about. 

I dreamed that I was facing Dr. Desmonde in 
his snuggery. I was clutching his arms with all 
my strength. He struggled and writhed, glaring 
at me with ghastly, bloodshot eyes set in the hor- 
ribly distorted features which I had seen across the 
onyx table. Everything about us was in confusion. 
Chairs and tables were overturned and I was lean- 
ing forward, saying fiercely, Sleep, man, sleep ! 
I command you sleep!” Then I woke up with a 
start ; bathed in perspiration ; the muscles of my 
arms still aching from the struggle. 

Of course the dream was easily accounted for, 
and I enjoyed a hearty laugh, while dressing, over 
the strand of hypnotism that was woven in ; never- 
theless, before I had finished breakfast — it was 
lunch according to the hotel calendar, as expressed 
on thb menu — I had determined to decline the in- 
vitation. 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


79 


It was through no diminution of faith or curi- 
osity, for both were stronger. It was simply a 
sense of the colossal proportions of the man, com- 
pared with whom I was the veriest pigmy, forcibly 
suggested by the impossible situation of my dream. 

If I were to go to Muckross the pigmy would 
shortly be unveiled, and, becoming a bore, my last 
chance of understanding Dr. Desmonde would be 
effectually obliterated. With this mind I was com- 
ing from the dining room when the clerk informed 
me that Dr. Desmonde’s housekeeper was waiting 
in the parlor. I found her standing in a secluded 
corner and she quietly declined a chair I offered. 

She evidently felt the lack of those familiar sur- 
roundings which lifted her a little above the social 
level which she considered rightly hers. 

She was one of nature’s peerage, but to the last 
time I ever met her on the street, she tried to pass 
me unnoticed and blushed and hung her head and 
hurried on when I lifted my hat. 

“ I’m only an Irish girl,” she said, each time that 
I demanded something different ; as though being 
“only an Irish girl,” was — but I suppose as a mat- 
ter of fact that it really is. Good heavens ! 

Why bless your bogs and moors, old Erin, if all 
the world were half as good and true and beautiful 
as the girls upon the shamrock sod, all the world 
would be a great deal better than it is, at any rate. 

“Excuse me, Mr. Willard, for coming here,” 
Kate began at once. “ The doctor is to take you 
out to drive, this afternoon, and I felt as if I must 


8o 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


see you one minute first. He asked you to come 
to Muckross and live, and I was afraid that you 
might not understand, and, for politeness or some- 
thing, might decline. I just wanted to say how 
much he means it and how hard I will try to make 
you comfortable, if you will only come.” 

“I can’t tell you how highly I appreciate your 
kindness, Kate,” I said. “ But remember how lit- 
tle the doctor knows me, and how bad it would be 
if afterward he should change his mind.” 

“ If you knew him better you’d know that he 
wouldn’t,” Kate replied, quickly. “ Lots of peo- 
ple call themselves his friends. His dining-room 
and billiard-room are always full, and his cigar 
cases and decanters are always empty, fill them as 
often as I will. He lets them come because they 
keep him from thinking ; but he doesn’t trust 
them. He wouldn’t ask one of them to live with 
him. Never since the house was built has he taken 
a mortal into the den, until last night.” 

“ If I could be of any possible service to him, 
Kate, it would be different,” I began, when she in- 
terrupted me in a whisper that was almost tragic : 

“ Service ? Why, Mr. Willard, you can save him. 
That’s why I’m begging you to come. . Oh sir, my 
heart is breaking. He is such a good friend to me 
and everyone. He’s always helping those that 
need ; but he’s dying an awful death, alone, and 
there’s no one to help him.” 

“ What on earth do you mean, Kate ?” I ex- 
claimed. “ Dr. Desmonde is not ill ?” 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


“ Oh no, sir, no,” she replied, and her face, that 
was flushed, became suddenly colorless. “ I never 
spoke of it to anyone before. I will never speak 
again. I’m only his housekeeper. I cannot un- 
derstand. But you could and could help him.” 

“You astonish me, Kate,” I said. “Neverthe- 
less, without asking any more, I will change my 
mind and accept the invitation.” 

She gave me one grateful look and left me 
standing there, for goodness knows how long, try- 
ing to realize what she said and what she meant. 
Yet it was nothing new to me. I had seen it all. 
I knew that Dr. Desmonde suffered, in some 
mysterious and awful way. The shock was chiefly 
in the thought that I, the pigmy at his feet, might 
have it in my power to help him ; and considera- 
tion brought me to the only natural conclusion 
that Kate was making a mistake. Doubtless he 
often felt himself alone. He was alone ; but 
mortal man was never more beyond the reach of a 
helping hand ; and that I could find a path by 
which to climb to that exalted solitude was most 
improbable. I felt it keenly while we were driv- 
ing. 

As we were passing an unpretentious little place 
among the foothills, north of the city, the doctor 
remarked : “ The couple living there are just now 

in a peculiar mess. The matter is in court and the 
neighbors who are pressing the prosecution sum-' 
moned me as an expert. I failed to appear and 
the court fined me for contempt. I might have 


82 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


evaded on the plea of professional engagements, 
but it really was contempt, you know, and I 
thought it would pleasantly italicise the fact to 
send in a crossed check. 

“ The crime is that the parents let a little two- 
year-old go. from influenza to inflammation of the 
lungs and brain covering and eventually die, re- 
fusing to call a physician, resting all their faith in 
prayer. Of course the bible promises, over and 
again, that the prayer of faith shall heal the sick ; 
and if there is anything that a god could consist- 
ently and conveniently accomplish, in answer to 
prayer, it is to cure a well-constructed youngster 
who is down with influenza. I have done it myself, 
times without number. It wouldn’t require any- 
thing like the disruption of law that it must to 
bring on a rain, when the wind-currents prognosti- 
cate drought. Yet the church militant firmly be- 
lieves that prayers for rain are answered by the 
direct intervention of omnipotence. It happened 
last year, in South Australia ; and though the 
weather bureau, on the Saturday, promised the 
rain which was prayed for on the Sunday and 
which fell on the Monday, even the daily papers 
declared that it was a convincing evidence of 
divine dispensation in direct response to supplica- 
tion. 

“ These parents had particularly little cause for 
faith in physicians, for they had just lost one child, 
and had left only an unpaid doctor’s bill ; while 
the overruling of divine sovereignity had been 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


83 


graphically impressed upon them, on that occa- 
sion, by a neighboring rector, who brought them, 
as the consolation of religion, the assurance that 
no matter what precautions were taken, all things 
must eventuate in exact accord with divine wis- 
dom and the will of God ; that it was God’s will or 
the child would not have died ; that therefore they 
must be reconciled and humbly say : ‘ Thy will, 

O Lord, be done.’ 

“ In honest and logical reasoning they turned, 
at once, this time, to the seat of power, praying : 
‘ Lead us not into affliction and deliver us from a 
fresh doctor’s bill.’ But this time, ignoring 
further religious consolation, the rector has insti- 
gated the courts to prosecute them for criminal 
neglect. 

“ They wanted me to testify that the child need 
not have died, under proper medical treatment. 
It was doubtless the case, but it simply amounted 
to swearing that the child did die because the 
parents put their faith in God ; and it was really 
only helping the rector to insult his deity and give 
the lie to his religion. 

“ I have precious little faith in medicine, myself. 
A doctor very seldom cures. Sometimes he re- 
lieves. Almost always he can console ; but nature 
does the rest. The inexorable and eternal order of 
necessity — of cause and effect — is a grand, sublime 
verity ; and the most that a doctor can do is to 
struggle to place a patient in harmony with At. It 
is preeminent, unimpeachable, unalterable. No 


84 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


creating of law is conceivable by anything but 
bigoted ignorance. Law is not abstract. It is 
relative and dependent, immutable and reliable. 
No power in the universe ever changed, for the 
breadth of a hair or the space of a second, the 
inevitable action of unintelligent necessity. 

“ All England prayed for the recovery of the 
Prince of Wales, and he recovered — but so have 
thousands, in the same condition, without a prayer. 
All America prayed for the restoration of Presi- 
dent Garfield, and he died ; because, as the doctors 
discovered in post-mortem examination, he had re- 
ceived a mortal wound. It was simply the neces- 
sity of inexorable law, which no deity could ever 
overrule. 

“ Real law is always just, Imwever disagreeable ; 
and merciful, however serious the results of in- 
fringement. If you put your finger in the fire it 
will be burned ; but when you take it out every 
force of nature that can reach it tends to heal the 
wound. No intelligence is evinced, or even com- 
patible. Intelligent administration of law is absurd 
contradiction. The application of cause and effect 
is universal and inevitable. Reason is biased, 
erratic, unreliable. 

“ The rules and regulations which men call laws 
and by which they attempt to control each other, 
the universe and a creator, are only effervescent, 
quixotic farces, at the best. When a rich man and 
a poor man lose their tempers and commit assaults 
they are fined, and in default must go to jail. The 


DESxMONDE, M. D. 


85 


rich man pays his fine and laughs. The poor man 
goes to jail, where he is clothed and fed, as the 
guest of the government, while his family suffers 
for the wages he should earn. 

“ Even the worst of human law, however, is 
better than the methods humanity ascribes to God. 
Take, for example, the inspired account of how 
God turned the heart of the pagan king to burn 
some eighty women and children, because they 
were, forsooth, the wives and the innocent offspring 
of a few politicians who had endeavored to under- 
mine the three Jewish counsellors of his majesty, 
who were apparently composed of asbestos. Or 
look at the responsibility which God boasts, for 
the plague which tortured and killed his chosen 
people by thousands, all because that acknowl- 
edged reprobate. King David, had caused a census 
to be taken. Or reflect upon the she-bears, whose 
internal capacity was so astoundingly inspired by 
God, that they were able to devour near fifty 
children because they were incredulous and laughed 
when a bald-headed old fellow in ashes and rags 
went down the road ranting of a friend who had 
‘ gone up ’ from before him in a chariot of fire. 

“ There are instances more, without end, like 
nursery goblin lore, all indicating, that the sub- 
lime creator is a ghastly monster, chiefly delighting 
in the torture and horrible death of inoffensive 
boys and girls. Christ curiously contradicted the 
impression, when he took a child in his arms and 
said : ^ Of such is the kingdom of heaven but he 


86 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


was, himself, a contradiction, like so much in 
Christian theory. For instance: the first chapter 
of the New Testament, an inspired chronology 
to prove him the fulfillment of prophecy, as a 
direct descendant, through the male line, accord- 
ing to the Jewish system of pedigree, from Abra- 
ham, Isaac and Jacob, through David and Solomon 
and Joseph, the carpenter; while every church of 
Christ on earth, holds, as a cardinal dogma. 

‘ Who was conceived of the Holy Ghost and born 
of the Virgin,’ being, therefore, no relative of that 
line of illustrious Israelites and no fulfillment of 
prophecy. 

“ However, to come back to law, the underlying 
principle of the whole human conception is the 
same, to wit : recognizing a wrong it recompenses 
it by another wrong as much greater than the origi- 
nal as the circumstances will allow ; with the auda- 
cious implication that the two wrongs result in one 
right.” 

I remarked that I fancied everything seemed 
more or less absurd, when seen under a microscope, 
and that in the making of laws, as well as every- 
thing else, I supposed that it was rational that the 
majority should rule, adding : “ I don’t imagine 
you would really advocate the abolition of punish- 
ment for crime, simply because law is imperfect 
and imperfectly adjusted.” 

The doctor shrugged his shoulders, replying : 

Who gave the majority the right to rule? 
Does might make right ? Have the rich authority 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


S; 


to oppress the poor ? Has the strong man the 
right to tyrannize over the weak ? The principle 
is the same. Truth does not twist itself to evil 
under the cloak that good may come ; or warp 
its ways to any delusive theory of the best good 
to the greatest number at the cost of the lesser. 

“ Why, if the cattle on a thousand hill^are really 
God’s, and if he makes the clouds his chariot, holds 
the sea in the hollow of his hand, and sees the spar- 
row fall, then he is surely guilty of a cruelty that 
is beyond the comprehension of mortal brains 
if he fails to sprinkle the water on the hills when 
they grow parched, and the cattle low and die of 
thirst. But, whenever there is a possibility of 
practical demonstration, everyone admits that im- 
mutable necessity governs the universe ; that for 
one or the multitude, law is always the same and 
harmony with it the one requisite. No one thrusts 
a finger in the fire and relies upon prayer for im- 
munity. 

“ Then, concerning punishment and crime, I 
should say that it depended very much on what you 
meant by crime. T doubt if there is anything but 
laziness which rightly comes under the jurisdiction 
of our accepted courts, and laziness, alas, is not in- 
dictable.” 

Then, for mercy’s sake, what do you call the 
misdemeanors filling our jails?” I exclaimed. 

“ Misdemeanors is a very good word,” he replied, 
quickly ; “ or, better still is the accepted sense of 
that ill-used word, insanity. We all admit that the 


88 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


victims are mentally deranged, when we say that 
they saw things in the wrong light. If every con- 
vict saw clearly, at the start, to just what his first 
indiscretion would lead him, no crime would ever 
be committed, simply for want of a criminal. It 
would not be virtue or morality, it would be simply 
common sense. But a thousand things produce 
diseased conditions in the brain, giving the mind 
false and diseased information and material, and 
the result is crime. 

“ If you speak to a man who is deaf, his mind 
gains nothing and surely is not culpable if it di- 
rects him into danger from which you warned him. 

“ One who is color-blind makes egregious blun- 
ders through his mind working on. the false infor- 
mation it receives by the defective channels. 

“ Now, in reality, it is vastly easier for the per- 
ceptive faculties to be distorted in intangible mat- 
ters, and so defective and deranged, that the mind 
receives from moral precepts and teaching as little 
in the way in which it is intended, as it receives 
through deaf ears and blind eyes ; and inadequate 
results — misdemeanors — as little indicate a false or 
wicked mind, as the working of a disabled steamer 
indicates the incapacity of the captain. 

“The same arguments do not produce the same 
results in different minds, or even in the same 
mind, under different bodily conditions. Every- 
one knows that indigestion, hunger, or a good din- 
ner affect the judgment and the disposition. And 


DESMONDE, M. D. 89 

they all affect the brain tissues — the most sensitive 
part of the human frame. 

“ The learned and wise among us condemn the 
soul to perdition because hunger incited the mind 
with facts which resulted in robbery, and indiges- 
tion irritated the tissues, giving the mind material 
from which the most natural production was pro- 
fanity. But a dinner of roast beef would have re- 
moved the arguments to theft. A dose of pepsin 
would have reduced the irritation, preventing the 
inclination to profanity. And either roast beef 
and pepsin can save the soul or the soul is not 
criminally responsible for results. 

“ If it is responsible then the body controlled by 
it is not ; and 

“ ‘ Life 'tis a strife, 'tis a bubble and a dream, 

And we are only little boats, 

Bobbing down a stream.’ ” 

But if the mind is a spirit of life, standing to the 
brain as the master stands to the machine — which 
it absolutely is — limited by its limitations, deranged 
by its deformities, crippled and blinded by its ab- 
normal trends and disabled by its flaws, then crime 
is a misnomer ; Christianity is founded upon error ; 
the diseased brain is the origin of crime and by 
proper medical treatment and repair the evil re- 
sults can be replaced by good. 

We do not apply punishment to a man whom 
we call insane. We know that to make his thoughts 


90 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


and actions rational requires only that his mind 
should be driven or enticed from morbid and dis- 
torted into healthy, normal channels. Now, words 
are weak, Willard, but take them at their strongest 
when I say that it is precisely the same with the 
worst criminal who lives. In morbid conditions his 
brain has become deranged. He realizes, as well 
as you, that it was not always so. He knows that 
he does, to-day, what once he would have turned 
from with horror. His mind has simply been so 
long exercising in those wrong centers that it runs 
there of itself. It works there without urging. It 
requires no struggle for concentration, there, and 
more and more the normal channels are deserted. 

“ The same thing is constantly going on in sound 
brains. The mathematician, through years of con- 
stant exercise, develops certain threads and cen- 
ters till, in them, his mind manipulates figures in 
lightning calculations that seem miraculous. But 
in dates and statistics he is utterly helpless. They 
are all figures ; all stored in cells very closely allied 
to the most active portions of his brain and all 
something that he learned after he studied mathe- 
matics. But his mind cannot even be driven into 
those adjoining cells. 

“ The fact that I, by exerting my will, endeavor 
to control my mind to some end, has given rise to 
the dual theory ; but it might better have been a 
trinity ; for the I is no more the will than the will 
is the mind. In reality they are but higher and 
lower qualities of the same energy and no more 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


91 


indicative of duality or trinity than the fact that if 
I take a precious piece of china in my hand and 
find it very hot I am instantly beset by the abso- 
lutely conflicting, co-temporaneous and co-ordinate 
inclinations to hold it, and save the dish, and drop 
it and save myself. 

“ Everything indicates a mind beyond the brain’s 
utmost capacity, but limited in reception and ex- 
pression to its eccentricities and vagaries ; in other 
words, its master and its slave. 

It is easy to have pity when the deflections 
appear harmlessly absurd ; to admire when they 
seem marvelous ; and equally easy, when they 
strike us as vicious, to call the victim a criminal 
and lock him up ; where his mind has better oppor- 
tunity than ever to exercise those same disordered 
centers, and where it almost always exaggerates 
and strengthens the very tendencies which resulted 
in conviction. Is it not so ? Will not the very 
strongest advocate of punishment admit; that re- 
formatories do not reform ; that the jail and work- 
house are but preparatory schools for the prison, 
and the prison the national university of crime ?” 

“ But, doctor,” I asked, “ do you mean that 
every alleged criminal is susceptible to reformation 
by medical treatment of the brain ?” 

‘‘What else does reformation mean he replied, 
instantly. “ It is surely the re-formation of some- 
thing that is de-fornded. Already, I have done 
enough to prove that treatment of the brain is pos- 
sible, and that it affects the moral as well as the 


92 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


physical. That physical results are obtainable by 
treating the lower portions of the brain, and that 
character can be changed by treatment of the outer 
coating, means simply this : that better knowledge 
alone is required to bring the whole machinery of 
thought within our power, enabling us to make the 
idiot sensible, the fool intelligent, the maniac ra- 
tional, the knave an honest man. Yes. It is pos- 
sible.” 

On returning from the drive” Dr. Desmonde in- 
sisted on my remaining to dinner, and even refused 
to allow me to return to the hotel to sleep ; so, un- 
ceremoniously, I became established in beautiful 
Muckross within three days of my arrival in the 
city ; established for a possible month, I considered 
at the first ; for five years, as it transpired. 

Five years in Muckross ; when every hour 
throbbed with life so real, that, looking forward now 
without it, the future seems black and dead ; al- 
most impossible. 

Dear, beautiful, halcyon Utopia ! Would that 
I might fly back to thee ! But life must be lived ; 
not passively enjoyed. And by that sign, Muck- 
ross could never again be what it was to me. 

I can hardly imagine conditions that can ever 
bring me to your gates again, dear old Muckross ; 
but if, when earth is disappearing, my other eyes 
shall open upon a- paradise as fair, verily, I shall 
shout for joy and leap from time into eternity. 

Every hour of the five years burns at my finger- 
tips to be recorded ; hours scintillating with many 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


93 


lights, but scintillating all, till for the life of me, I 
could not choose between them, if one, just one, 
could be repeated ; hours all aglow from the many- 
sided brilliancy of that kaleidoscopic man. 

They have no bearing, however, upon the end 
which I hope to accomplish, and I must discard 
them all, with the simple assertion that they were 
there, but that nearly a year passed by without 
my gaining a single clue to Kate’s meaning con- 
cerning any help that I could render, or in any 
way gratifying my first curiosity. 

Now and then Kate remarked : 

“ The doctor is so much happier and better since 
you came,” but that was all, and I concluded that 
it was all she had intended. Nor did I know the 
doctor one whit better than after the first night in 
the den. 

Many new depths had developed, but I had 
fathomed none of them. I could not discover a 
single limitation nor come upon a single quality 
which I could fully understand. Then an incident 
occurred, leading me into darkness but toward the 
light. 

The organ in the snuggery stood opposite the 
double door which opened on the main hall. For 
a time I made frequent use of it, for, though the 
doctor never played, he was fond of music, and 
often urged me. But I noticed that sometimes it 
seemed to make him restless instead of soothing 
him, and thereafter I avoided the organ when he 
was in the house, unless he asked me. 


94 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


Supposing him to be out, one afternoon, I sat 
dreaming over the keyboard when, in the polished 
plate before me, I saw his reflection. He was 
standing in the open doors. Every feature of his 
face was as distinct as in a looking glass. It was 
full of repose. The music was evidently soothing 
and I played on, with no inclination to turn or 
speak and break the spell. 

My fingers moved involuntarily, while my eyes 
rested on the reflection and my thoughts drifted 
back and back ; halting here and there with mo- 
ments when that face had been most graphically 
impressed upon my mind, till at last I was sitting 
in the concert hall watching him enter. 

The natural association of ideas carried my fin- 
gers to the refrain of “The Holy City,” and instinc- 
tively putting on the swell I let the organ peal the 
notes of “ Hosanna in the highest.” 

Suddenly the reflected face shrank into the 
awful outlines I had seen that night, and disap- 
peared. 

Shuddering I wondered if it was only my imagi- 
nation ; if he had really been there at all. 

I dared not turn, but was still, unconsciously, 
repeating the same strain when the door, leading 
from the back hall into tl\e lower end of the snug- 
gery, opened, and Kate ran quickly down the 
room. / 

She caught my hand and whispered : “ Not that, 
Mr. Willard. For God’s sake, not that. The doc- 
tor might be coming in and hear it,” 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


95 


Sadly enough, then, I knew that he had come in 
and had heard it. But as Kate had not seen him 
he had doubtless stepped across the hall into the 
drawing-room, where he would still be within 
sound of our voices ; so, refraining from asking 
any questions, I simply undertook another theme, 
of much the same character, letting it run into the 
ninth sonata, which I knew was his favorite. 

Then I closed the organ, lit my pipe, and taking 
up a paper pretended to .read, while I listened and 
longed for the sound of his feet, hoping for an 
opportunity to try once more to turn his thoughts 
as I had the night in the den. But he did not 
come. I did not see him again until dinner. 


CHAPTER VII. 

At dinner I noticed a slightly unnatural flush 
on the doctor’s cheeks, dark lines under his eyes, 
that seemed languid and heavy, and a peculiar 
leaden pallor about his lips. After a quiet meal he 
lighted a cigarette, lay down on the sofa and in a 
moment was sleeping heavily. 

Kate’s face was serious and pale and even Jack 
was not himself. Instead of leaping on the sofa 
he lay down on the rug, till I pushed back my 
chair and took up the paper. Then, without an 


96 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


invitation, he jumped upon my knee and lay there 
with his brown eyes wide open. 

Passing near me Kate whispered : He must 
have been in the house and heard.” 

“ Yes,” I said to myself, indignantly, “ He was 
in the house and he did hear. He heard the Ho- 
sanna, from “The Holy City.” Then a face flushed 
with alcohol and eyes deadened by narcotic. And 
now a senseless body, stupefied by opiate. Oh, 
Dr. Desmonde ! Cassiopeia of my firmament, my 
idol ! Snoring like a brute, because your mighty 
brain has found a master !” 

My meteor flashed and in the flame expired. 
And the blackness was not relieved by one spark 
of charity. At last I considered that I had come 
upon something which I could understand — the 
senseless thing upon the sofa. Curiosity seemed 
satisfied and fascination vanished in disgust. 

A motion in the open door attracted me. Kate 
was beckoning from the hall. I rose and followed 
her to the farther end of the snuggery. Jack went 
with me, his pretty head drooping while his waltz- 
ing haunches hardly seemed to move. He did not 
even look toward the divan, nor did I. 

Kate’s eyes were red and swollen. Her cheeks 
were sunken and white as she turned and said : 

“ Now you have seen it, Mr. Willard, and you 
know. Oh, pity him and save him.” 

No mortal could have failed to pity — Kate. I 
took her hand in mine and answered ; 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


97 


Save him from what, Kate ? I do not under- 
stand.’' 

From the awful suffering he is trying to for- 
get,” Kate sobbed. “ It will drive him to his 
death, soon, if you don’t.” 

Two little words. “To forget.” What was 
there in them to turn the dragging undertow, suck- 
ing me out to sea ; as a great wave, rolling in, 
rushes farther than ever, foaming and sparkling up 
the rattling pebbles of the beach ? I only know 
they turned it, saying to me that his own hand had 
done it, because his own mind ran riot and caused 
him suffering ; that the voice of a master com- 
manded : “ Peace. Be still.” And even the mind 
of the great Desmonde was forced to obey. 

“ To forget what, Kate ?” I asked. But she 
only shook her head, replying : 

“ He has suffered since before I knew him. And 
oftener and more, of late, until you came.” 

“ Let me go to my room and think it over, 
Kate,” I said. “ If he wakes and wants me, or if 
you want me, you will find me there. In the mean- 
time, if it is right to trust me, help me by telling 
me all you know.” 

“ Indeed I should be so glad to trust you, Mr. 
Willard,” Kate replied. “ But I only know what 
my eyes have seen and you have seen it all. I 
have known the piece which you were playing 
make him remember before, and so I tried to stop 
you.” 

Alone, in my room, I sat and thought. It was 


98 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


the strain from “ The Holy City ” and the Resurrec- 
tion Hymn, which were almost identical, that 
“ made him remember,” in the cathedral, at the 
concert, and in the snuggery. And already I had 
taken a step in advance of Kate, for I knew that 
the beautiful face, beyond the golden gates, also 
“ made him remember.” Something in the asso- 
ciation of ideas, perhaps, impressed me sp strongly 
that intuitively I accepted the probability that 
the one whose angelic face was painted on the 
porcelain was, indeed, beyond the golden gates of 
poetic reality. 

What could it be which it made him remember. 

Had he loved her ? It was quite possible ; but 
it was more than that which he remembered. 

Had she deceived him ? It was quite possible. 
Beautiful women have deceived good men, before; 
for the skin-deep qualities of beauty sadly often 
unfit the proud possessor to appreciate the pro- 
founder values of the best of men. However it 
was not that which he remembered. 

Had she loved him and been dragged away and 
forced to marry another ? It was possible ; though 
the painted features impressed me as of one who 
would have gone through fire and flood for the 
man she loved. Albeit it was not that which he 
remembered. 

Had they loved and been torn apart by death ? 
Women have been loved and lost, and hearts 
broken at a deathbed have ached a long life out 
alone. But it was not that which he remembered. 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


99 


Had he . I shuddered and left the thought 

unfinished. It was too glaringly impossible. And 
yet it was something which he remembered about 
the angelic face enshrined upon the onyx table. 

I turned to the effect which the memory pro- 
duced, to tfy if I might not come at it by analyz- 
ing the motive of the suffering ; but they were 
quickly sifted out and all but one passed through 
the meshes which would guage such torture as he 
endured. Whatever it was that he remembered 
the memory produced remorse ; bitter, poignant 
remorse. It only brought me back again to the 
point where I had shuddered and turned away ; 
and I finished the question : Had he betrayed her ? 
Could it be possible ? 

Was he so different, long ago } In some mo- 
ment of maddening passion had he betrayed her, 
with insurmountable obstacles to honorable 
amends, and had she taken her own life, or died 
resultantly ? 

One could conjure conditions which might be, 
and would torture a man’s life, afterward, if he 
were such a man "as Desmonde, and could have 
such a spectre in his past ; though for that the 
strain from the Resurrection Hymn was a strange 
talisman. 

I recalled his words that pain was nature’s 
danger signal, and mental or physical meant that a 
law had been broken. Pain such as his meant 
something commensurate in the magnitude of the 
broken law. Remorse like his meant nothing less 


lOO 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


than the irredeemable wreck of the woman he 
loved. It meant betrayal or 

There was but one thing else, and even to think 
the word was impossible. It must be betrayal. 

Kate came softly in to tell me that Dr. Desmonde 
woke and went directly to his room ; that she had 
listened at the door till he got into bed ; that she 
had turned away all callers and patients ; and now 
her sad eyes asked, anxiously : “ What next ?” 

How helpless I was. I only said : “ Go to bed, 

Kate. I will put out my light, leave my door ajar, 
and watch.” What did it amount to ? Only this : 
that, as the night was wearing on, there suddenly 
stole upon my ears the first soft notes of the Re- 
surrection Hymn, coming from the organ in the 
snuggery. 

Pushing off my slippers I hurried down stairs. 
The double doorswere closed, but the sound com- 
ing from the back warned me that the other door 
was open. I found it ajar and cautiously looked 
in. 

Only one of the organ candles was lighted. It 
shone full on the side of Dr. Desmonde’s face that 
was toward me. The rest of the room was black. 
That face alone was white, distinct and startling. 

He had no notes and was not even looking at 
the key-board ; but his fingers moved with a touch 
and decision that was perfect. Every note was 
correct, even to beautiful variations. 

I remembered, then, that he had said : “ I 

never play not that he could not play ; but 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


lOI 


there was little time for thought. He was ap- 
proaching the fatal lines. My eyes were riveted 
upon his face. It was white — ghastly white in the 
candle light ; but to my utter astonishment there 
emanated from every feature a radiance expressive 
of supreme, almost superhuman joy. 

The hair was thrown back from the forehead. 
The eyes looked up in dreamy extasy. The 
lips were parted in a beatific smile, even while 
a tear glistened on the cheek. Then in a voice 
that was full of melody he sang as he played ; 
“ Hosanna in the highest — in the highest.” 

I was dumb. The alternative disappeared. He 
had not betrayed her. I knew the truth then, and 
shuddered. 

After a mo-ment of silence his eyes fell, slowly, 
till they rested on a plain gold ring he wore. His 
face contracted in those awful lines, and with a 
fearful cringe he groaned : 

“ Lenore ! O God ! O God !” 

Staggering from the organ he groped his way 
upstairs. I followed him, silently, reaching his 
door but a moment after he had closed it ; but the 
first response, when I rapped and called ; “ Can I 

come in ?” was a sharp click, which I knew, as 
well as if I had seen it, meant the closing of a 
hypodermic syringe case. At least he had not 
had time for another injection. 

“Come in,” he called, and entering I found him 
getting into bed. Before I could speak he con- 
tinued: “ What, up and dressed at this time ?” 


102 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


I had forgotten the inconsistency and to avoid 
arousing suspicion I answered, without sufficient 
thought : 

“ I fancied that I heard the organ going and 
started to investigate ; but seeing a light under 
your door I brought up here. I was not feeling 
quite right and possibly my brain was feverishly 
romancing.” 

The doctor watched me, for a moment, with 
half closed eyes. It was a peculiar but not unpleas- 
ant way he had, when stopping to think. 

“Your nature requires cold facts to start upon,” 
he said. “ However feverishly imagination may 
romance with them afterward. The difference be- 
tween a sound and unsound brain — between a level 
head and anywhere from a crank to a maniac, you 
know — is that one founds his romances upon facts, 
which is pure reasoning, while the other founds his 
facts upon romances, which is unadulterated in- 
sanity. 

“ Now, you are exceptionally sane and level- 
headed and, prima facie, as it were, your founda- 
tion was doubtless sound fact. Don’t construe 
that into a pun on the noise which the organ was 
making, but tell me, to what conclusion did your 
fancy come ?” 

“To the query, at least, if my ideal of honesty 
had not told a lie,” I replied, smiling, 

“ My dear fellow,” the doctor began, solemnly, 
“ the inspired psalmist confesses that he said, in his 
haste, that all men are liars. And Tm inclined to 


DESMONDE, M. D. 103 

think that, like other liars, when he spoke in a 
hurry he came nearest to the truth. 

“ The earliest inclinations of the infant are to 
preserve some sweet reality or avoid a threatened 
evil by conveying impressions which do not accord 
with facts. He cries when he is in pain and his 
mother takes him in her arms. How soon he 
learns to cry when he is not in pain. 

“ The last and strongest instincts of old age, and 
of all intervening ages, are to cover certain facts 
and color others. The bird builds its nest and pro- 
tects its young upon purely secretive and deceptive 
principles ; and everything that lives dissembles. 

If he cannot do it skillfully enough himself nature 
aids him in many marvelous ways to cheat his 
enemies. 

“ A lie meets all creation in its cradle and goes 
with it to its grave. It dulls the sharpness of 
many a thorn for us, rounds many a rugged cor- 
ner. It perfumes and deodorizes many a fetid 
smell. It putties up life’s rottenness and varnishes 
the rust and corrosion. It is honey where truth ' 
would be wormwood, cooling where truth Would 
scorch. It is a cushion where a blow from truth 
would kill. It hides deformities, builds out the 
form and makes the sad, the sick, the haggard 
look happy, well and strong. We lie to ourselves, 
we lie to our neighbors, and those who have a God 
lie most of all to him. Oh sacred and divine secre- 
tiveness ! from the first fig-leaf to the last robe of 
righteousness indispensable adjunct of being. 


104 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


“ Compassion causes us to lie. Courtesy con- 
strains us to lie. Self-preservation compels us to 
lie. And are all things, therefore, pessimists ? 
Oh no, my friend. No, no. 

“ A general’s success depends upon his doing the 
best deceiving, and even of Jehova it is written, in 
the Bible, that he is a merchant, the balances of 
deceit are in his hands, he loveth to oppress. He 
instructed Gideon to deceive. He made Jacob 
patriarch of his chosen people and blessed him as 
man was never blessed before, even to naming him- 
self The God of Jacob, all because the unmitigated 
scoundrel cheated his brother out of his birthright, 
and infamously deceived his dying father with 
hands that were like his brother’s because they 
were covered with a lie. 

“ I said, ‘ I never play,’ which was a statement of 
orthodox and evangelical truth, covering nearly 
twenty years, until to-night, and yet it secreted a 
lie. It produced, as I intended, the impression 
that I could not play ; because, for reasons in no 
way affecting you, I preferred that you should not 
know. Just as you, from the kindest of motives, I 
am sure, preferred, when you came in, that I should 
not know that you came direct from the rear door 
of the snuggery. Hold on, now. No offense, old 
chap. Only for example. Now the reason that I 
never play is because ” 

“Stop, Desmonde,” I cried. “ This is not a con- 
fessional. It is no affair of mine.” 

“ No fear,” he replied, with a smile. “ Confes- 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


105 


sional implies a crime, old boy, and while I admit 
that practically I lied, I am doing my best to prove 
that, in itself, a lie is no sin at all ; but an expres- 
sion of the highest instinct in animals and the re- 
sult of the first and noblest reasoning, in man. I’m 
not an animated dictionary, but I think the inani- 
mate things will agree that a lie is a false state- 
ment, intended to deceive. There is nothing 
about that to indicate that anyone is misguided to 
injury ; while a sin must surely injure oneself or 
someone else. The veriest truth is often told with 
intent to do injury, and when it is, the truth be- 
comes a sin. 

‘‘Now, let’s turn to the next thing. You said 
you were not feeling quite right. Well, I’m a doc- 
tor. It’s two guineas after dark, you know ; a tre- 
mendous reducer of night calls ; but, what’s out 
with you ? Has something gone wrong with the 
works ? What is it ?” 

He was fencing. I thought for a moment and 
replied : 

“ Anxiety.” 

“ For me ?” he asked. 

I nodded my head. 

“ I have a closeted skeleton ?” 

Again I nodded. 

“Something rattled the bones of the ghastly thing 
this afternoon T' 

His eyes were fixed on me. But I had nothing 
to keep back, and though every muscle in me trem- 
bled, I replied : 


DESMONDE, M D. 


io6 

“The Hosanna, from “The Holy City,” which 
I played.” 

“ And you were horrifled when I turned for re- 
lief to the nepenthe which has wrecked so many a 
physician. I was even about to repeat the dose 
when your rap prevented me. Well, Willard,” he 
continued, slowly, “ if the skeleton were yours you 
would place a syringe upon your holiest altar and, 
kneeling to it, you would say with King David : 

‘ Though he slay me yet will I trust him.’ ” 

“I might,” I replied, “but lam not Desmonde.” 

“ What do you know of Desmonde ?” he asked, 
sharply. 

“ I know he is an honest man,” I said. “ A man 
to whom sin means that which does injury; who 
would shun a sin against me if it cost him his life. 
He knows the effect of alcohol and opium on the 
heart and brain tissues, and that for him to use 
them as he does is sin.” 

Shaking his head, the doctor answered, hoarsely : 

“ The skeleton is mightier than Desmonde, Wil- 
lard. You do not know the skeleton.” 

Did I ? I ground my teeth to crush back the 
throbs from my heart that were stifling me. If I 
were making a mistake it was all over between us. 
Even if I was right what right had I ? For a mo- 
ment I was ready to run. I even glanced toward 
the door. But I thought of my friend as he lay on 
the sofa, and of Kate as she said : “ It will drive 
him to his death soon, if you don’t,” and dragging 


DESMONDE, M. D. 10/ 

back my courage I looked him steadily in the eyes 
and answered : 

“ The skeleton is murder, doctor ; the murder of 
the woman whom you loved.” 

His face was white, like death ; and calm like 
death ; but his eyes did not flinch or his voice qua- 
ver as he said : 

“ And is that why you followed me ?” 

“ Oh, my friend, my friend,” I cried, springing to 
my feet. “ By all that is honest in the universe, 
believe me ! I know absolutely nothing. I do not 
even know your nationality. Only to-night you 
drove me to guess what I said, and I said it, simply 
that you might know that I could understand, 
could pity, and still could say that though I and all 
the world, for less suffering, might fall upon our 
knees to opium, Desmonde, you should not — you 
must not ” 

*‘And I will not, Willard. From this hour never 
again,” he said, rising from the bed and grasping 
my hand. “ It is too late now, but after dinner — 
ah — to-night, come to the den. I have something 
to say to you. And now, good-night, old chap, 
and pleasant dream.s.” 


JJESMONDE, M. D. 


loS 


CHAPTER VIII. 

Surely I should have known the doctor well 
enough not to expect any sign in the morning ; 
but the night before had made such deep impres- 
sion upon me that, when I sought in vain for any 
reflection in the doctor, I was tormented with the 
fear that, in spite of every indication to the con- 
trary, he must still have been under the influence 
of some drug while he talked, and have wholly 
forgotten. 

After breakfast he remarked : “ I’m off early 

this morning, Willard, and if you want a bit of 
novelty in medical practice, come along. There 
was a murder committed last night, and the man 
is up at the jail, in a bad way. The jailer has tele- 
phoned me, as city physician, and as there is the 
appearance of being stark mad, about him, the 
court has called upon me, too, for an expert opinion, 
for the inquest. We’ll have some fun out of it, at 
any rate.” 

That word “ murder ” sent an icy chill to my 
heart, but there was not a quiver in the doctor, to 
indicate that it recalled a single incident. 

The circumstances of the murder were simple 
and quickly related, on our arrival at the jail: an 
offlcer, passing through a dark alley, came suddenly 
upon the man in the very act of stabbing another 
fellow in the back. Since his arrest he had been 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


lOQ 

vehemently raving, till now he had become uncon- 
scious. “ He has either taken poison or he’s dying 
in a fit,” the jailer said. ‘‘ He is crazy, at any rate,” 
the officer from the court added ; and we entered 
the padded cell, where the young fellow lay upon 
his back, white and semi-rigid, his eyes showing 
only a glassy, death-like stare, his breathing 
scarcely perceptible. 

“ Catalepsy,” Dr. Desmonde muttered, and catch- 
ing him by the hair gave his head a vigorous 
shake. 

Then he examined his eyes and made a test or 
two upon his body, muttering : “ Let’s have off a 

shoe and tickle the bottom of his foot. A fellow 
must be pretty well unconscious to stand that. I 
say. Jack, osculate. Go on. Look at that foot. 
H’m.” 

Osculation, with Jack, meant kissing ; and among 
his pretty tricks was one always to kiss upon the 
ear. He leaped upon the cot, gave one sharp lap, 
over the man’s ear, and down again. Dr. Des- 
monde straightened himself, with a sigh, and turn- 
ing to the jailer said : “ He seems to be in a cata- 

leptic trance. He’ll come out of it all right, and 
being exhausted he will sleep most of the day. 
Don’t let any one refer to the murder before him. 
You say it was at precisely nine o’clock 

“ The officer had just registered his nine o’clock 
call, doctor,” the keeper replied. 

“Very well,” the doctor continued. “I think 
that the man is suffering from cataleptic insanity. 


no 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


If SO, when the clock strikes nine, to-night, he will 
be seized the same as last night. If he could get 
another knife and victim he’d do another killing. 
He will go through all the motions, without them, 
and when he thinks his man is dead he’ll start in 
raving again and end up like this. In a day or 
two he’ll be right again. It is time I was at the 
hospital,, gentleman, so I’ll say good-day.” 

As we drove to the hospital the doctor said 
“ What a queer thing the brain is. Just a mass of 
cells and fibres, constantly absorbing nutriment and 
carrying messages, without one second of rest, from 
the cradle to the grave. The mass above the spinal 
connection regulates the machine work — respiration, 
pulsation, digestion ; and next above it are the cells 
controlling erratic muscular action, like walking and 
eating ; automatic in a way, but requiring a little 
closer intelligent attention ; and then the entire 
outer coating, utilized at the option of the mind 
and according as it is developed, as supply stations, 
storage vaults and workshops and playgrounds, for 
thought, reason and the will. 

Every action having an intelligent design 
starts from that outer surface. The brain is not 
wholly confined to the cranium. The quick re- 
sponses we call reflex action are the results of 
brain centers located in different parts of the body ; 
and the exaggerated capacity of certain functions 
in animals — and in men, too, who are educated to 
meet extraordinary demands or are deprived of 
some other natural faculties — is simply the 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


nr 


development of those branch offices, and of a 
more intimate union between thern and the centers 
of thought. 

“ There is no action whatsoever, however pas- 
sive, reflex, instinctive or automatic, which is not 
actually instigated by the mind ; and the mind can 
be, and sometimes is, in direct, intelligent and 
reasoning control of every nerve-thread and cell 
throughout the entire body. It only lacks the 
knack to be always consciously in control. 

“ That is the secret by which the adepts of vari- 
ous mysteries perform their feats — suspended ani- 
mation and the rest. It is the way in which the 
will checks and accelerates the heart’s action, and 
that a sudden shock can operate so vigorously 
upon the stomach and digestive organs. It is the 
way too, in which we shall some day be able to 
treat the entire body through the brain. 

“ Even when we have accomplished the perfect 
means which we are seeking, it will still be diffi- 
cult, at the first, operating through brains devel- 
oped in ages of helpless dependence upon external 
aid ; but the bringing up of the brain is a very 
simple matter after all. A baby can neither see 
nor hear nor smell when it is first stared at, by ad- 
miring relatives. Its mind is working through the 
lower channels, but the finer threads of perception 
and thought are wholly undeveloped. Sometimes 
important connections fail altogether, but the 
mind quickly adapts other channels to its needs. 

Laura Bridgman showed the capacity of nerve 


I I 2 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


connections and centers to develop, by constant, 
careful exercise, till they supplied the mind of the 
deaf, blind woman with almost all the information 
which sight and hearing would have afforded her. 
But knowing that she was really deaf and blind we 
only marveled at her accomplishments and did not 
expect her to comprehend either a sunset or a 
symphony. 

“ Now, my friend, it is in no way different with 
a hobby, a mania, insanity or crime. Some cen- 
ters or connections have failed through weakness, 
accident, deformation or neglect ; some have been 
unduly developed by exercise, vicious incentives, 
unsatisfied desires, depraving instigations, till the 
mind has entirely deserted some and enlarged and 
strengthened others. If it chances to be in a way 
that we approve we call it genius and worship it. 
If it strikes us as simply absurd we say it is insan- 
ity and pity it. If it defies our notions of pro- 
priety we call it crime and punish it. 

Talent is a properly educated brain, through 
which the mind does easily what others accomplish 
with difficulty. Genius is an eccentric develop- 
ment, by which the mind accomplishes certain 
things where talent fails. Insanity and crime are 
precisely the same. They are eccentric develop- 
ments of deformed, distorted or improperly con- 
nected combinations. We all of us possess the 
rudiments of both. In well-regulated lives they 
are called imagination and ambition. Abnormally 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


13 


developed, one becomes insanity and the other 
crime. 

‘‘ Truly, when one man kills another and gets 
himself hanged for it, I can’t help feeling that the 
world is properly rid of two undesirable adjuncts. 
But that is not the real philosophy of life ; for if 
we knew every minute detail which led that fellow, 
at the jail, to do the deed, last night, and if we 
could see the warped channels through which his 
mind worked up to it, believe me, Willard, we 
should not find him one whit more worthy of pun- 
ishment than the captain who is out of his course 
because his compass, his chart, his sextant and 
chronometer were all of them wrong. 

“There’s no doubt that he fully realized that 
he was breaking a law of the land and endangering 
his neck, if he was caught ; but where is the moral 
argument there ? Does not the scout, the spy, 
realize precisely the same thing when he enters the 
enemy’s country? Does he not feel fully and hon- 
orably justified and yet know, perfectly well, the 
impossibility of convincing those about him ? 

“When the poor fellow sees where it has brought 
him he will confess that he made a mistake — so 
did the captain of the Warrimoo, when he went on 
the rocks, from a false chart, at Victoria.” 

With shame I say it that I suspected this phi- 
losophy of resulting from a desire, on Dr. Des- 
monde’s part, to palliate his own act of long before ; 
and lest the same thought should occur to others, 
depriving them as it deprived me, that day, let me 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


1 14 

declare, at once, that it was as far as possible from 
correct. There was not the remotest application 
to himself ; poor fellow, if there had been he would 
only have pointed it more fiercely, instead of find- 
ing a single extenuating circumstance. 

With my unworthy suspicion, and unwilling that 
he should find me ready to condone a crime, I 
said : 

“ A very serious mistake, at least, and one 
deserving rigorous treatment lest it occur again.” 

“ Serious,” the doctor repeated, shrugging his 
shoulders. “ Yes, for those depending on the man 
who was killed, if he was really of any great 
value. But where is the virtue in adjusting that 
wrong by breaking the other fellow’s neck ?” 

“ It certainly prevents his repeating the mis- 
take,” I said : 

“ So would the sinking of a ship that sprung a 
leak, prevent its leaking ; and the killing of a horse 
that went lame, prevent his limping,” the doctor 
replied. “ But I believe that I can set the man’s 
brain right for him. I mean to give the new 
machine a test, at any rate. It can’t be worse 
than hanging.” 

“ But if they find the man insane how can they 
hang him ?” I asked. “ And by the way what is 
cataleptic insanity ?” 

‘‘ I really don’t know.” The doctor said and 
laughed. “ It’s a new variety of mental bug, of the 
genus hum, on exhibition for the first time, at our 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


II5 

jail, at nine o’clock to-night, if my diagnosis is cor- 
rect.” 

You don’t mean — ” 

“Yes I do. The fellow was humbugging; play- 
ing catalepsy for all he was worth and playing it 
beautifully. Truth is mighty and will generally 
prevail in the end, but it takes a good lie to pro- 
duce spontaneous conviction. The officers were 
so sure that he was dying or mad that 1 was posi- 
tive, in advance, that we should find him sham- 
ming. But he almost had me, too, in spite of my 
prejudice. His mind was holding every nerve 
thread in his body. You could have cut him in 
pieces and he would not have winced. Everything 
was held in complete paralysis ; but of course, if 
he was fooling us, he was keeping himself posted 
and it must be through his ears. So, while I 
centered the . attention of his mind on his foot. 
Jack gave him an unexpected lap upon the ear 
and his diaphragm cringed. 

“ I have often noticed the same thing in normal 
brains : the mind can work in eight, even ten ways 
at once, if it is working rationally and honestly, 
but it is a very difficult thing for it to guard two 
lies at a time. A bewildered man will stick to an 
original lie, like grim death, even while he is ad- 
mitting facts directly contradicting it. It is the 
secret of successful cross-examination. 

“ I opine that our friend at the jail will present all 
of the symptoms of cataleptic insanity, to-night, 
and that to-morrow, when I tell him it was all a 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


1 16 

hoax, to reciprocate the joke he played so well on 
me, he will try to kill himself — or me, as his 
humble acknowledgment of the mistake. But he 
has a rattling good brain. There’s no limit to the 
service it may be to us through its self-attained 
ability to carry the mind. I’m going to strike a 
bargain with him to save his neck and take it out 
experimentally.” 

The doctor made no reference to the night be- 
fore, or the evening to c'ome, till dinner was over ; 
when, pushing back his chair and lighting a cig- 
arette, he said to Kate : “ Mr. Willard and I have 
all that we can attend to in the den for the next 
two hours. At nine-fifteen, not a minute before, 
ring up the jail and ask if the cataleptic prisoner 
has gone through his gyrations. Then blow the 
den whistle, and tell me what they say. After 
that I will see any callers or patients who care to 
wait. 

“ Come on, Willard,” he added, and led the way ; 
not much like a man on the eve of confessing a 
murder filling his life with horrible remorse ; not 
much like one on the eve of confessing anything, if 
confessional implies a crime. He smiled as he 
threw himself into his usual chair and I took mine 
across the onyx table. His hand was resting within 
an inch of the shrine when he began : 

“ Brace yourself well, old boy, for a veritable 
chamber of horrors. But I’ll open the door grad- 
ually ; first upon my nationality. You said you 
didn’t know ; but I’ll venture a sov. to a farthing 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


II7 

that, if it became of importance, you could shut 
yourself up for an hour and then hit it to a dot. 
You have it already. You are thinking I am 
Irish.” 

I laughed as I replied : “ Upon my word. 

Doc., at that moment I was thinking that so many 
good qualities as you possess were never yet amal- 
gamated under any but an Irish scalp.” 

“Yea, verily, ye flather me, now,” the doctor 
replied, with a smile. “ Good old Erin. She has 
much that is best and most that is worst of the 
world’s characteristics. She is like the little girl 
who had a little curl right down in the middle of 
her forehead ; and when she was good she was 
very very good, and when she was bad she was 
horrid. 

“ Yes, I am Irish ; though, through a kind of 
military necessity, the fact is not generally known. 
For in truth I am a political convict — an escaped 
exile. Some of the recent wholesale pardons may 
have adapted themselves to my case ; I never 
cared enough to discover. When I was seventeen 
I graduated from Christ Church, Dublin, and 
began the study of medicine ; but the woes of old 
Erin lay heavy on my heart. An Irishman always 
goes by his heart, you know ; never by his head, 
like other men. I was born on the Boyne water^ 
just south of the site of the historic city of Tara. 

“ My home was a stone’s throw from the home 
of John Boyle O’Reilly; a royal Irish patriot and 
as grand a fellow as ever set foot on sod. He be- 


ii8 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


came an escaped exile, too, in time, and he died, a 
little while ago, in Boston. 

“ The little window of my bedroom looked out 
upon the field where the battle of the Boyne was 
fought, and the first thing in life that I learned to 
hate was the monument there, commemorating the 
victory of William over good old James. I was 
home for a holiday when they were making ready 
to celebrate the grand anniversary of the battle 
which so nearly disrupted old Erin again. I did 
my best toward the disruption, but I failed. It 
was before the days of dynamite, but, fresh from 
the study of chemistry, I had ideas of my own, as 
to what a world-reducing combustible ought to be, 
and I prepared a concoction, planted it safely at 
the base of the monument and set it off in the 
midst of a tremendous crowd, at the close of the 
great oration. I took no precautions, for I really 
wanted tO'go up with the rest and see the last of 
it. But my original combination simply tossed the 
turf about enough to betray its sinister intent and 
leave a big hole in the ground ; then fizzled out. 

“ The wTong fellow was tried and condemned 
for it, so I stepped in with such a full confession 
that I overshot the mark and portrayed myself as 
an infernal rascal, fit only for transportation. 

“ I only remained a fortnight in Australia how- 
ever. I went back as captain’s boy on the vessel 
that brought me out. He is dead, now, poor fel- 
low. So there is no harm in admitting that he was 
a friend of mine. It was less than a year from the 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


II9 

time when her Majesty’s officers signed me an ex- 
ile for life, when I was back again in London, 
studying medicine under their noses, supporting 
myself goodness knows how. I never cared much 
for chemistry after that, but I gave my attention 
to the new thing they were fetching into medicine 
called electricity.” 

Suddenly, Dr. Desmonde’s voice and manner 
changed, as music changes from the loud and de- 
fiant to the soft and low ; moving one to tears with- 
his knowing why. 

“ My heart I gave to a perfect woman — a nurse 
in the hospital where I was senior house-surgeon. 
Yes,” he replied, as I involuntarily glanced to- 
ward the shrine ; and turning his hand he touched 
the spring. We sat for a moment in silence, look- 
ing at the beautiful face. Then he repeated rev- 
erently, “a perfect woman. And the one glory of 
my life is that she loved me. 

“ Her mother was dead. Her father’s namewas 
high in the peerage, but like many another peer he 
was hopelessly bankrupt. He demanded that she 
marry his heaviest creditor. She refused. To 
force her he placed her at his mercy to accomplish 
her ruin. When, after that, she still refused, he cast 
her off, turned her penniless upon the world with 
her beauty, her purity — so much the purer. I’m 
thinking, for her wrong — her innocence and her 
shame. She took a position as nurse in our hospital, 
never thinking that her identity was known. It was 
only by mistake that I learned this much, though she 


120 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


told me it, herself. She was suffering from what 
later developed into a most serious matter. She 
asked me to mesmerize her to sleep as I sometimes 
did for the patients. With her eyes open she be- 
gan to talk and in a moment had told me the story 
before I realized that she was under any influence 
at all.” 

Dr. Desmonde sighed. With all my heart I 
pitied him, but realizing not only the uselessness 
but the unkindness of trying to stop him then, I 
waited in silence till he continued : 

“ She was a beautiful singer. She sang the 
Resurrection Hymn as no one else on earth. I ac- 
companied her the last time I ever touched an instru- 
ment, until last night. No one knew of the trouble 
that was developing until it reached a point where 
death was inevitable within a month, unless her 
life was saved by one of the most doubtful and dif- 
ficult operations known to surgery, even to-day. 
Not one in ten had survived at that time. Not one 
had ever made a complete recovery. 

“Well, I told her of the situation and asked her 
to marry me before the operation. I knew what it 
was that held her back and I was almost on the 
point of telling her I knew and how much the 
more I loved and honored her ; when she sud- 
denly took my hands in hers, confessed that she 
loved me and said that if she lived and I came to 
her again she would be my wife. But in the same 
breath she demanded that I perform the opera- 
tion. 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


12 


“ I had never even seen it performed. I refused, 
and begged, and pleaded, but she Would not listen. 
I implored her only to let me assist the one sur- 
geon in London whom I would have dared to trust; 
but she only repeated that unless I would promise 
to perform it, with no one present but my junior 
and the nurses, she would die without permitting 
an attempt to save her. When I could plead no 
longer I promised — and she kissed me. 

“ I was educated in the strictest form of Chris- 
tian faith, and I turned to Almighty God as no 
one ever turned before. I stormed the ‘Mercy 
Seat for steady nerves and strength. I bought that 
ring — our wedding ring — and put it on that finger 
to keep my hand from evil. All night, before the 
operation, I was upon my knees. I offered every 
drop of blood and every breath to do God’s ser- 
vice. I offered life itself, if he would only save her 
life. 

“ She was brought into the operating room asleep. 
I did not look at her. I fixed my thoughts for life 
and death on the blue point of steel as it went 
, deeper and deeper down, till in the anxiety of the 
work I even forgot who lay upon the table. I for- 
got everything but the knife ; I can see it now, 
creeping along the great, throbbing artery for four 
inches, where the deviation of a hair meant death, 
r watched it till the last cut was made and the 
operation a success! The life was saved. And 
even then it didn’t come to me whose life it was. 

With feverish haste I removed the sponges. 


122 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


tied the small arteries, freed the forceps, tooK the 
knife again for an immaterial cut and all was done. 
With the knife still in my right hand I turned to 
take a fresh sponge in my left for the last cleans- 
ing.” 

For a moment Dr. Desmonde struggled in vain 
to speak. The look which I so dreaded came 
slowly not suddenly, this time, into his face again 
and half choking he went on : 

“ The attendant seeing I was nearly through, 
was relieving the chloroform. That was all. The 
patient wasn’t really conscious, but she sang that 
strain from the Resurrection Hymn — * Hosanna in 
the highest.’ It was her voice ! In one great thrill 
of joy I remembered whose life was saved. I 
started ! Man, I dropped the knife ! I saw it 
falling, grasped to catch it, but it had pierced the 
artery and a spurt of blood was thrown across my 
hand.” 

Quick as thought the doctor’s voice and manner 
changed again, to the calmness and carelessness I 
knew so well, and he actually smiled as he contin- 
ued : “ No, no, my friend ; I didn’t faint, or clutch 

the air, or do any other foolish thing to betray me. 
I was never better collected in my life. The suc- 
cess had been too much for me, but I was prepared 
for failure. I knew that I had killed her, but that 
if no one else suspected it she would be taken to 
her room and gently nursed until she died uncon- 
scious of it all. 

“To-day we should have tried to save her, but 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


123 


then it was considered hopeless. I thought of a 
vial on my mantel, waiting for me if I failed, and 
caught the cut to prevent the hemorrhage from 
showing itself too quickly. I left the forceps in 
the wound, a perfectly legitimated procedure, did 
the dressing myself to be sure that discovery was 
guarded against, and motioned them to carry her 
away. But when my junior and the nurses came 
up to congratulate me, it was more than I could 
stand. I pushed them away, tore off my operat- 
ing coat — Ha ! how the buttons burst and flew — 
and rushed to my room for the drug that was to 
take me over first to meet her on the other side. 

“ When I realized anything again, I was on a 
sailing vessel, working before the mast, some eight 
weeks out from London. I never wanted to learn 
how I came there. What transpired at the hospi- 
tall I would not have found out if I could. The 
drug must have worked in some peculiar way, and 
to be rid of me and save scandal, the hospital 
people had probably packed me off. They gave me 
a very pointed hint that they did not care to hear 
from me again,, for in my chest I found my notes 
and papers, my diplomas, the best of my books 
and a few instruments that I prized. I took the 
hint. They never heard from me. 

“ The ring was still upon my finger. I have 
never had it off. And in sixteen years of active 
practice, that hand has never made another serious 
slip. For a while I wandered about the world, 
into one occupation after another, never dreaming 


124 


DESMONDS, M. D. 


that there was power in the universe to force me 
to perform another operation. I drove a horse-car 
on Fourth avenue, in New York city. I worked 
as coal-heaver in the stoke hole of the steamer 
that brought me here. But in the gangling hub- 
bub up and down Fourth avenue, in the fury of a 
hurricane while clinging to the iced shrouds, or 
with my face to the fierce white heat of the fur- 
naces, the awful moment still came back to me. 

“ Fd see the falling knife, feel the hot blood 
spurt across my hand and know that by my own 
damned carelessness I killed the woman who loved 
me. It drove me from the steamer the first night 
when we lay here in port. Some fanatic evangelists 
on the wharf were singing a song with that 
hosanna in the chorus. The steamer could not 
hold me. I wandered from bar to bar till my legs 
couldn’t carry me; but my brain would not be 
still. I fell down, in a vacant lot, and lay there 
groaning. It was the lot on which I built the 
Sailors’ Hospital you were rapturing over. You 
can see, now, how it was selfishness, as I said, and 
not philanthropy ; only to cover up the ground. 

“ It was the night of the great earthquake. I 
watched the buildings falling and burning, and 
people suffering and dying ; but I didn’t care. 
Suddenly a voice said, ‘ Why are you lying here 
when you could save so many from pain and 
death. Someone loves them and longs to have 
them spared.’ 

“Before I knew it I was on my feet, working 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


125 


night and day, mad with joy to think I was doing 
something to atone for that accident. They had it 
I was working miracles because I used hypnotism 
where I could ; and when the worst was over I had 
but to register my diplomas to be overwhelmed 
with patronage that to this day has not fallen off. 

“ Two years later I began this house. It was 
four years in coming to what it is. To preserve 
my instruments from another earthquake I had 
these chambers excavated from the ledge, and to 
preserve the one thing which more than all else I 
valued, I hollowed out this dome. If man can defy 
an earthquake I have done it, and my treasure is 
safe.” 

He laid his hand tenderly upon the golden arch. 

“ The house is built entirely from the rock that 
was quarried here,” he continued. “ I called it 
‘ Muckross,’ that dear old Irish word meaning ‘A 
Rock of Rest.’ I have found a kind of rest here, 
and happiness in every life I save, especially if the 
patient is too poor to obliterate it with gold. But 
I cannot hide out of reach of that horror. 

“ What ? Kate at the tube ? Is it nine-fifteen 
already ? She says he has acted it all out and sat- 
isfied them that he is insane ! Good old cataleptic 
insanity !” and he burst into a hearty laugh ; not 
much like a man who had just confessed a murder 
filling his life with remorse ; not much like a man 
who had just confessed anything, if confessional 
implies a crime. Albeit, it was just like Dr. Des- 
monde. 


126 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


CHAPTER IX. 

I BEGAN to see the folly of having set my unpro- 
fessional prejudice against Dr. Desmonde’s judg- 
ment in the use of liquor and morphia ; and through 
the following year, as I watched him fight out 
attacks unaided, my fears increased. 

He scrupulously avoided the remotest reference 
to the subject again and pointedly repulsed any 
attempt of mine to refer to it. I could only as- 
sume an exaggerated interest in his experiments, 
tempting him to increased activity in one direction 
which might serve to divert him from another. 

In spite of his suffering he worked with such 
zeal and success that volumes might be written, by 
one properly prepared, upon the wonderful accom- 
plishments of his laboratory and operating-rooms. 

In the present record I am trying, instead, to 
avoid them just as far as possible ; feeling that I 
should simply incur both professional and non-pro- 
fessional antagonism, utterly aborting the only aim 
of this little volume. The world will shortly un- 
derstand the system through one well fitted to 
promulgate it, while for the present I shall simply 
refer to such accomplishments as may be pertinent, 
without attempting explanation. 

Through it all, of course, my heart and thoughts 
were most with him whose skillful fingers could 
adjust each tiny instrument to work the miracles ; 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


127 


for he was bending under the weight of that terri- 
ble burden, which seemed beyond my utmost 
power to lift. 

One afternoon he returned with the drawn look 
more marked than ever before upon his face — the 
look which told us of the suffering he was trying to 
hide. Only an hour before I had left him at the 
hospital, assisting at a long operation. 

In the hope of distracting him, as we finished 
dinner, I remarked : “ Let’s take a stroll, Doc., 

and wind up with an hour at the club.” 

He did not look up as he replied : “ I have 

some work which requires the solitude of the den 
for to-night, and I’ll ask you to remember me to 
the fellows at the club.” 

It was the first time since I came to Muckross 
that Dr. Desmonde had allowed rrie so much as an 
opportunity to escape him if there was a possi- 
bility of his being alone. ' Even Kate noticed it, 
and it brought graphically to me the steps which 
he had described, in others, indicating that the 
inevitable was drawing nearer, with awful preci- 
sion ; while the one being to whom it was impossi- 
ble for us to turn for help, was probably the only 
mortal in the world who could have arrested its 
progress. 

The doctor went directly to his den, telling Kate 
not to disturb him, as he would see neither patients 
nor callers, and, utterly helpless, I went to my 
room. Some hours later, while I was still strug- 
gling with the threadbare question : What can we 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


h 

128 

do for him ?” Kate came in without knocking, 
caught me by the arm and gasped : 

“ He’s in the snuggery. The doors are closed. 
He is pacing up and down and groaning like a 
madman.” 

“ Bring me his morphia tube and syringe,” I 
muttered. Kate shuddered, but obeyed, and we 
went together to the rear door of the snuggery. 
There I paused, with my hand upon the knob. In 
vain I tried to nerve myself to enter. We could 
distinctly hear the heavy, irregular tread, now and 
then broken by deep groans ; and every groan 
and foot-fall brought more before me the colossal 
proportions of the man and my own inadequacy. 
It was only his supreme gentleness and courtesy 
which ever brought him within my reach. Three 
times I essayed to enter. Three times I failed. 
What had I to do in there ? I ? A pigmy at his 
feet. 

Verily, I almost turned to Kate to ask her to 
do what was so far beyond me, when an awful 
groan sent a chill to every nerve, but gave me, 
withal, the courage of despair. On the instant I 
opened the door and entered the snuggery. 

Dr. Desmonde was near the center of the room 
and coming toward me. His face was shriveled 
and yellow. His eyes were bloodshot and horribly 
staring. His lips were drawn back from his teeth. 

He paused as I entered. A fierce light flashed 
in his eyes. A fiendish grin wrinkled his face and 
he crouched and glared like a wild beast about to 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


129 


spring. I could not have withstood him long 
enough to call for help ; but fortunately the 
thought of self-preservation did not occur to me. 

I am satisfied that had I retreated, the result 
would have been fatal to both of us ; but throw- 
ing out my open hands I ran forward, exclaiming : 
“ Why, Desmonde, old boy, what a lark you are 
having.” 

He hesitated and drew back with an expression 
of surprise in his wild eyes. Instantly I clutched 
his wrists, and if ever there was such a quality as 
superhuman strength I possessed it that night in 
the snuggery. 

He writhed and struggled, shouted and groaned 
as we staggered together about the room, and 
chairs and tables went crashing to the floor. He 
dragged me as he would ; but without a word I 
clung to his wrists and kept my eyes fixed on his. 

Then, like a flash-light in a dark room, the dream 
came back to me which had so seriously impressed 
me after my first evening in the den. 

I have no theory. I only know that the forgot- 
ten dream and the reality were identical. I went 
through that same struggle, in my sleep, more 
than three years before. The same disorder was 
about me, the same pain in the strained muscles of 
my arms. T had clutched those wrists and glared 
into those same bloodshot eyes ; and the face that 
I saw was as true as a photograph. But the dream 
had gone farther ; and now, without a conscious 
design, or an intelligent idea of anything that it 


130 


DESMONDS, M. D. 


would be possible to accomplish, simply because 
it was so in the dream, I leaned forward and 
piercing those maniac eyes with mine, I muttered 
fiercely, “ Sleep, man, sleep ! I command you 
sleep !” 

If Dr. Desmonde had wrenched his hands away 
and clutched my throat as his response, I could 
not have been so startled as I was to see the 
swollen lids quiver and close, and feel the muscles 
relax till the hands hung limp and lifeless in my 
grasp. 

I stood there dumb and staring, when Kate 
came up and laying her hand on my arm said, 
reverently : 

“ Thank God, you have hypnotized him.” 

Hypnotized the great Desmonde ? Hypno- 
tized a raving maniac ?' I ? Still I stared, but there 
was no doubt of it. The utterly unconscious re- 
sult only waited for me to make the most of the 
opportunity. Still bewildered, I tried to recall 
the times when I had watched the doctor operate 
hypnotically, and to arrange what I should most 
wish to have occur, in case he really did obey. I 
dared not drop his wrists and in mortal terror lest 
my voice should only rouse him, I said : 

“ Listen to me, doctor. You must hear me and 
obey. You must go to your room, lie down and 
sleep soundly till your clock strikes nine in the 
morning. Then you must wake up feeling well 
and strong, hungry and happy. You must forget 
everything that has happened in this room, to- 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


T31 

night. Do you understand ? Answer me if you 
do.’’ 

After so long that I felt sure my words had had 
no effect, in a strange, struggling way he mut- 
tered : 

“Any fool could understand that.” 

Kate burst into a hearty laugh, which might 
have been comforting had it not so startled me, 
breaking in on such an atmosphere of doubt and 
anxiety. However, it had no effect upon the doc- 
tor. He readily accompanied me to his room and 
instantly lay down, still profoundly unconscious. 

We left one light burning and watched by turns, 
outside his door, but he did not move. Never, I 
am sure, however, did two people wait, more anx- 
iously than we, for a clock to strike nine, in the 
morning. 

I stood inside my door, just opposite the doc- 
tor’s, and Kate at the door of the billiard-room, 
next down the hall. It struck, at last, and with it 
came an incoherent sound, followed by a sleepy 
voice, muttering nothing less than “ Jumping 
Moses !” 

This was quickly followed by a characteristic 
howl for Kate, whose cheery answer sounded as 
she hurried to respond, when the following con- 
versation occurred : 

“ I say, Kate, who was drunk last night, when I 
went to bed ?” 

“ No one that I know of, doctor, why ?” 

“ Because I didn’t go to bed properly, at all. 


132 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


And look at that light. Going at that rate since I 
don’t know when. Damned waste of good mate- 
rial, Kate. And I say, isn’t breakfast ready ! It’s 
bally late and I’m beastly hungry.” 

“ Yes, doctor, but you’ll have your bath first, 
won’t you ?” 

“ Did I say bath or breakfast, Kate 

“ You said breakfast, doctor.” 

“ If I ask for fish will you give me a scorpion ?” 

** Fish, is it? Do you want fish for — ” 

No, Kate, I want breakfast. Neither bath nor 
fish, flounced menu nor scrambled air on toasted 
shadow.” 

Well, I’ll hurry the girls right on with it, doc- 
tor.” 

^‘Oh, Kate, you told me it was ready now. You 
told a lie. And for every idle word that man shall 
speak he shall give account thereof in the day of 
judgment. It’s too late to hurry the girls with 
breakfast now, for listen : I have to see a patient 
at precisely half past nine. He was as bad as bad 
could be when I left him yesterday, and the 
probability is he took a turn and got a bally 
sight worse in the night. If he did I’ve got to 
operate this morning. Vinton is to be there to 
help me, at half past nine, sharp. You needn’t 
look so glum. The fellow will pull it through all 
right, in spite of both of us. It’s only the time 
I’m talking about. If I hadn’t had that operation 
on my mind to wake me, I suppose I might have 
slept till the crack of doom, for all the interference 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


^33 


you would have offered. Fortunately I took the 
precaution not to shuffle off my furnishing goods, 
last night, which saved me redressing, this -morn- 
ing. Here, button this collar for me. Oh, knot 
the tie under my chin, not under my ear ; and do 
be quick, for mercy’s sake. 

“ There. I can patch together the rest of my- 
self alone. Go tell the girls to hustle on a bite of 
something, for I’m starving, and a cup of tea — tea 
mind you, not coffee. My nerves are steady as a 
cow, thanks to a promise that fellow across the 
hall extorted from me a year ago. 

Tell Sam to have the brougham at the door, 
immediately quick, and after that go wake Willard 
up and tell him to stay asleep another hour.” I’ll 
be back then for breakfast. 

A cold recital does not make the words sound 
as they did coming in the doctor’s merry tones, 
interpolated through toweling, modulated by ab- 
lutions at the washbowl, interjected amidst the 
clatter of combs and brushes, and punctuated by 
toilet gymnastic ; but at least it may be easily im- 
agined that they brought me great joy. 

It opened a vista of hope before me upon which, 
unfortunately, I placed too good reliance ; yet 
through it all I did not entirely fail to see a cloud 
upon the horizon, warning me that the end was not 
yet. 


134 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


CHAPTER X. 

At the late breakfast, Dr. Desmonde’s face was 
a most interesting study. For once his eyes were 
restless and inquisitive. He had been thinking and 
was perplexed. After breakfast, he said : 

“ Up at the hospital, yesterday, I saw a surgeon 
drop a knife into an open wound. It knotted every 
nerve in me. I saw my old knife falling and fall- 
ing, and every time it made a ghastlier slash, till I 
believed I was walking about drenched in the blood 
that spurted out. The den couldn’t hold me after 
dinner, and I came up to the hall for my hat to go 
out on the street ; but I heard Kate’s step and 
went into the snuggery and shut the door. The 
next I knew, my clock was striking nine, and I was 
lying on my bed — dressed, mind you — nerves 
steady, head clear, temperature normal and appe- 
tite right on the quarter deck. I have no after 
symptoms of morphia, but I’ll put it straight, old 
chap ; my syringe case has spent the last year in a 
secluded corner of my dressing case. This morn- 
ing I found it on top and in the middle of the 
drawer. I have no recollection of having used it, 
but then I have no recollection of anything else, 
either. I may have gone half daft, you know.” 

The doctor’s intention was evidently to account 
for a possible resort to morphia ; but it gave me 
an opportunity of which I availed myself to say : 


DESMONDE, M. D. 1 35 

You didn’t touch the morphia, doctor. I know, 
for I met you in the snuggery ” 

“ By the gods, I thought so !” he exclaimed, 
“ but it was so vague that I took it for a dream.” 

“ No wonder it was vague. Doc.,” I continued. 
“You were in a very bad way; but, fortunately, 
when I suggested that you go to your room and 
go to sleep, you took the hint, like a sensible 
man.” 

“ Well, I was not sensible,” the doctor muttered, 
“ and I did not take a hint like that intelligently. 
I believe there was hypnotism in the suggestion.” 

Obviously, the idea was not agreeable to him 
and he branched off at once in his peculiar way of 
changing a subject without changing it. “Hypno- 
tism is a bad word for it. Braid gave it that name, 
from the Greek word, to sleep ; to undermine Mes- 
mer, who claimed that it was the result of animal 
magnetism. Now, it certainly is assisted by some 
kind of magnetism, while sleep is absolutely non- 
essential, except as an evidence that the operator 
has gained control. When our system is completed 
and invulnerably established, I hope that some 
form of the Greek word meaning ‘ suggestion ’ will 
be selected for it. That is all that it really is. 

“ Already we could do away with every drug but 
anti-toxines ; and I believe there is a universal spe- 
cific for germ diseases, too, in the same blue cur- 
rent of disintegrated electricity. I believe it can 
be disseminated through rays of light, thrown with 
sufficient force to penetrate the human form and 


136 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


carry death to all bacteria — to all molecular, micro- 
cosmic organism. Then we shall need no drugs at 
all. 

Medicine, surgery, hypnotism are all good 
struggles, when they are rightly used, to lift men 
out of the results of broken laws. We have bor- 
rowed from all of them. But they are all blocks 
for a building without a foundation. That is why 
they must always be laid so carefully and doubt- 
fully, and why they so often fail to accomplish, in 
spite of our best endeavors. 

In the direct treatment of the brain, we go be. 
neath them all and lay the foundation. Given a 
sound and perfect brain, through which the mind 
can keep the body free and well, and we shall have 
intelligent harmony with unintelligent law that, as 
sure as warmth with sunlight, will result in perfect 
men and women ; mentally, morally and physically 
a perfect humanity ; not through any fear or hope 
of future reward or punishment, which must be 
kept at a white heat or fail to operate, but through 
radical, fundamental, self-sustaining common sense. 
It will be death to carping hypocrites wrapped in 
robes of righteousness, and to wolves in sheep’s 
clothing ; death to slinking cowards kicked into 
external correctness by irritated consciences, or 
frightened from error by the fumes of hell. It will 
be righteousness because it is in harmony with the 
inexorable necessities of truth and life. 

“ Christianity does not inculcate manly rectitude. 
On the contrary it is a temptation and encourage- 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


137 


merit to continuance in evil by its perennial 
promise of immunity, whenever I am satisfied with 
sin and prepared to repent. Christianity actually 
weakens the repugnance toward evil which is in 
every human breast, by the assurance that though 
my sins be as scarlet they shall be as wool ; or red, 
like crimson, washed whiter than snow. 

“ My friend, if sin is the breaking of a law how 
can it be forgiven ? He who claimed to forgive it 
showed, in the very act, the utter inconsistency, 
inadequacy, and brutal injustice of the theory. A 
broken law is not less than a broken bone, and, if 
the consequences of sin would be avoided, sin 
must not be committed. Until the blood on 
Calvary can restore the life of the murdered man, 
and reimburse the attendant loss and suffering, it 
is preposterous for it to claim to wash away the 
sin of the murderer. 

“ All his life long, for example, the depredations 
of the dying thief caused innocent ones unmerited 
suffering ; but, when his opportunities were ex- 
hausted, because he cast a thought of sympathy 
toward the sacrifice upon his right, as an exponent 
of its future intentions divine clemency publicly 
transferred him from his cross to paradise. Is it 
written or believed, however, that one of his un- 
fortunate victims received a grain of temporal con- 
solation, even ? Why, if I could believe the 
theories of Christianity, I would rather live the life 
of the dying thief, and take my chances at the end^ 
than be the most devout and humble follower, 


138 DESMONDE, M. D. 

from whom, having nothing, he took even that he 
had. 

“If we give those theories intelligent considera- 
tion, they affront every innate conception of right, 
truth, justice, honor and equity in the human 
breast. How honest men can accept them, even 
with their eyes shut, I cannot understand. How 
they are made the cloak to cover hyprocrisy is as 
plain as the hyprocrisy. 

“What.? Christianity has redeeming features? 
So had the putrid carcass of the hound, in the Arab 
legend, whiter teeth than any of his maligners. 
Did that redeem the fetid corpse ? No more can 
that which is good in Christianity redeem it ; 
while that which is bad in it makes it the cardinal 
curse of our century. It is not Christianity which 
does so much to benefit the world, but humanitarian 
men and women, who would do the same in any 
sphere of faith in which they found themselves ; 
while the evil, lurking under the robe of righteous- 
ness, is like a scorpion in a bed of roses. For it the 
very roses become a warning of venom, and real 
righteousness is discredited. 

“You say that Christianity surely tends to make 
men better, and till something superior is devised 
it is wrong to belittle it ? My friend, that is only 
the hackneyed agony of an unsupportable argu- 
ment. Point blank I deny it. The proof is every- 
where. Every principle of good in it can be found 
in the heart of the pagan. Every sin has its in- 
evitable consequence of suffering to the sinner or 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


39 


to someone else, and it does not lessen the tendency 
to crime to cover up the fact with the assurance 
that if I sin and confess it Christ is faithful and 
just to forgive me. If fear of the church has some- 
times held men back from open evil so has fear of 
the guillotine ; so have goblin nursery tales acted 
on children. But at the best cowardice is not a 
manly quality. And even if the argument were 
true I should only say ‘Here is something better — 
something as far superior as the sunlight is to a 
candle.’ 

“ When the mind is given a brain that is not 
warped it will be as unlikely to produce results that 
are wrong in the moral sphere, as it is now to insti- 
gate the body to thrust a finger in the fire. 

“ Let it but realize that every sin has its inevita- 
ble consequence, against which no excuse can 
avail, from which there can be no escape, for which 
the only forgiveness lies in complete repair, and, 
knowing the truth, the truth shall make it free. 
Man will no more throw his moral nature, then, 
into the gulf of dishonor than he would throw his 
body, to-day, over a precipice. He will 7io longer 
shiy trusting to the curseful comfort of Christianity 
that selfish immunity waits upon repentance, in 
cases where the futility of forgiveness is not too 
easily demonstrated. 

“ Manliness because it is manly ; honor because 
it is honorable ; humanity and righteousness be- 
cause they are right, are the watchwords of com- 
mon sense and perfect lives here and in any here- 


140 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


after that may await the principle of intelligence 
pervading us. 

“ The theories of Christianity are directly re- 
sponsible for many of the deformed and distorted 
avenues of thought ; but for all of them there lies, 
in the field where we are working, the promise of 
ability to reconstruct and heal. 

“ Well ! what a w^ays I wandered off. We were 
talking of hypnotism and of your power over me. 
I felt it at the philharmonic concert. I knew it in 
the cathedral, and I was never so astonished in my 
life as when, at the club, and afterward in the den, 
I became convinced that you did not appreciate 
the fact yourself. I say, Willard, I can hardly 
believe it, even now. Tell me, honestly, old boy, 
how much do you realize of your responsibility for 
that duffer’s sermon on Easter Sunday ?” 

“Assuredly nothing I” I said, in blank astonish- 
ment. 

“By Jove!” the doctor muttered, and then: 
“ When you came up behind me, on the street, I 
knew that you wanted something of me, and when 
the boy who had caught my professional fancy 
went into the cathedral, I was tempted to let him 
go and stop outside with you ; but, close behind 
me, you said : ‘ Now I have found you I’ll not 

lose sight of you again until I know you.’ Eh?” 

“ I thought it. Doc., but I didn’t know I spoke,” 
I answered. 

“ Quite right,” he continued, carelessly, “ I under- 
stood you, at least, and went in. For a time it was 


DESMONDE, M, D. 


!4I 

Strain enough to drag whatever vital force it is 
from those about me and throw it into the boy’s 
brain ; but when the experiment succeeded and his 
mind was taking advantage of the opportunity to 
show itself, thoroughly exhausted and in a mentally 
torpid state, in which one is most easily susceptible 
to hypnotic influence, I noticed you again and felt 
your eyes fixed on me. The sense was restful. I 
enjoyed it. 

' “ Presently you said to me : ‘ What rot that fel- 

low is talking. Take your eyes from your cane 
and look at him, for a moment. We .will hammer 
a little common sense into his sermon.’ Eh ?” 

With a strange, faint feeling in my throat I an- 
swered : “ I surely thought something like that, 

but I did not speak.” 

“Quite so,” he said, indifferently. “ And I was 
only conscious of curiosity. I hadn’t heard a word 
of the sermon, up to that, so I couldn’t fully un- 
derstand, but I did appreciate a most astounding 
exhibition of mental possibility. I simply looked 
up at the unhappy mortal who stood there, pre- 
scribing some kind of cordial which he knew could 
never cure. I made no possible exertion, but in a 
moment I realized that I had caught his eye and 
that it stopped his tongue. What followed abso- 
lutely stunned and paralyzed me. Have you ever 
been near a great bell when it struck, and caught 
first the click from the clapper as the bell and 
hammer met, closely followed by the clang of the 
bell-metal ? Well, it was precisely that, in my brain. 


142 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


I felt each word, in a whisper, come from you, then 
sound from the lips of the priest. I was consciously 
perceptive. My brain was working but my mind 
was not. 

“ When I came home I tried the first experiment 
and found that I could use my telephone, though 
the wires were cut, if my man held one end in each 
hand. Building on the two possibilities I began 
the instrument I was at work upon when you came 
to Muckross — the first real victory of my life. 

“ And still you don’t believe you preached that 
sermon ? Tell me. Was there absolutely no 
sense of anything familiar about it ? Did each 
word strike you as entirely new and unexpected ? 
I thought not. The truth is your mind was work- 
ing in my brain. The principle was doubtless 
practically the same as in physical projection, only 
that being present your brain was able to perceive 
the result. The only incomprehensible part to 
me, is your own unconsciousness of intention. 

“ But now that the secret is out, old boy, be 
careful how you attempt to take advantage of it ; 
for the only real thing upon which a man prides 
himself — especially an Irishman — is his individual- 
ity and independence. 

“ Last night my brain was exhausted, almost to 
collapse, and I’m not so surprised as a professional 
hypnotist might be, at its. susceptibility to sug- 
gestion. The length of time that it lasted, how- 
ever, is unaccountable, unless there is also a sug- 
gestion in the place where I found my syringe.” 


DESMONDS, M. D. 


143 


If it really was hypnotism, doctor,” I replied, 

It surely helped you, and you ought to let me try 
again. At least I can assure you that it was 
not morphia, for I had the case in my pocket 
when I met you in the snuggery, and this morn- 
' ing, while you were still sleeping, I threw it back 
into your drawer.” 

“ You meant for me to use morphia, again ?” he 
muttered. “ I made that promise because I was 
convinced that it was wise. And while I have my 
senses, Willard, I shall not break it till I am 
equally well convinced to the contrary.” 

“ I didn’t know, then, how much it saved you, 
doctor,” I remarked. 

“ Nor did I,” he replied, resting his head upon 
his hand — a gesture entirely new to him and pa- 
thetically suggestive. “ I began the use of anodyne 
honestly, because the mental strain unfitted me for 
work. I didn’t understand the brain as I do now, 
and at the best one is slow to apply to himself the 
simplest reasoning that aids him with others. 
Anaesthetics quieted the attacks, but they are only 
erratic warnings, by their increasing violence re- 
gistering the progress which has been made between 
them.” 

Again and again I tried, but utterly in vain, to 
persuade the doctor to resort to some measure in 
self-defence. I doubt if the surgeon lives who is 
eager to undertake his own treatment. It is a 
characteristic of humanity and in his present con- 


144 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


dition it was not strange that even Dr. Desmonde 
evinced so much evidence that he was human. 

He had obviously conceived a distinct dread of 
my attempting any further experiments and was 
constantly on his guard. But I lost faith myself, 
too, both in hypnotism and morphia, when I real- 
ized that the actual danger was not even delayed 
by them ; that the mind was still working all the 
time along those morbid lines and that, at the 
worst, the attacks only threatened to accomplish in 
one wild riot what was steadily approaching by a 
process that was slower but no less sure. 

Through the months that followed, our eyes be- 
ing opened, Kate and I could see how our friend 
was bending, more and more, under the burden ; 
coming steadily nearer to the end. 

The end? Was an awful death or hopeless in- 
sanity the only limitation of Dr. Desmonde which 
I was doomed to understand ? Was it for that 
that I came to Muckross ? The first shock of this 
thought was beyond expression. 

By unremitting efforts in every conceivable way, 
I presume that we retarded the progress, but we 
were hampered ; for the slightest suspicion of anx- 
iety, even, was now visibly irritating. 

The two attacks next following the incident in 
the snuggery came when I was beside the doctor, 
and able instantly to distract him, before he could 
yield ; but the third had already gained too fierce a 
grip to be dislodged. 

From the moment when we met he resorted to 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


145 


silly, childish subterfuges, to cover the fact that he 
was suffering. He refused to eat, at dinner, and 
with a meaningless grin declared that he was going 
alone to the den to try some important experi- 
ments with which he proposed to surprise me in 
the morning. 

It needed only to look into his face and remem- 
ber that months of progress had been made by the 
demon of torture, since the night in the snuggery, 
to fully realize that if he entered the den alone, 
that night, he was surely lost. Revolving the mat- 
ter quickly and anxiously in my mind I presume 
that I looked toward him, unconsciously. He 
started back, raised his clinched fist and shouted : 

“ Damn your eyes, Willard, I’ll ” 

The rest was only a guttural gurgle. Clutching 
the table I exclaimed: “ Sleep, man ! Sleep!” 
But the words need not have been spoken. He 
was unconscious before they left my lips. From 
some differing conditions, however, this time his 
muscles became rigid as iron. 

Kate was standing behind his chair and, long 
afterward when we could more happily recount 
those anxious hours, she was wont to say that she 
didn’t wonder at the effect, for the look in my face 
at that moment, was enough to turn anything to 
stone. 

“ I’m afraid we have come to the end, Kate,” I 
said, hoarsely. 

“ No, no, not that, sir. See, you have stopped it,” 


146 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


she replied, but her voice quavered. “ He is here 
and there is still time to do something.” 

“ In heaven’s name, what, Kate I groaned. 

“ His instruments,” she said, in a whisper, 
choked with sobs. 

My eyes fell from Kate to the unconscious figure, 
with the clinched, uplifted fist, whose fingers alone 
could manipulate those marvelous playthings of 
his brain ; those poor dumb instruments. 

“ There is no one on earth who can use them, 
Kate,” I muttered, choking, myself, as I shook my 
head. 

“ No one but you, sir,” she replied, and her 
hand reverently drew the doctor’s hair back from 
his forehead. 

“ I ?” I gasped. 

“ At least you can try, sir,” she said. “ I will 
help you all I can. I alone shall know it and if 
you fail I shall know that you did your best. It 
is all that can save him and if you try, sir, I think 
you will succeed.” 

She was actually smiling through her tears. It 
seemed like a rainbow of promise ; but while I 
look at her a thick haze gathered before my eyes 
and all grew black. Then out of the blackness a 
sentence seemed to blaze in letters like fire. Three 
times it flashed and disappeared and I was again 
seeing Kate’s smile and tears. 

“ Kate, Kate,” I cried, “ He shall help us. He 
, shall guide us. He shall do it himself.” 

Then I looked again at the man we loved and 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


14; 

I am not ashamed to own that I too saw through 
tears as I repeated the sentence I had read in fire : 
“ Physician, heal thyself.” 


CHAPTER XL 

Fools will rush in where angels fear to tread ; 
yet in a book of great wisdom it is written that an 
all-wise one selected foolish things to confound the 
mighty ; so that even two thousand years ago it 
appears that someone considered that, on occa- 
sions, the world might be better off for the fools 
who were here. Albeit, it does not modify the 
majesty of angelic wisdom, or mitigate the folly of 
the fools. 

It was the maddest folly to give a single thought 
to Kate’s suggestion, and it is hardly conceivable 
that even a fool should have gathered indorsement 
from a psychic demonstration under the manage- 
ment of an excited brain and over-wrought nervous 
system ; but if confession is good for the soul let 
me confess that I did just that. Only this can be 
said in expiation — and, pray, let it expiate as far 
as it may, for with it have I not already poulticed 
and bandaged, ay, beaten and flayed, too, that per- 
nicious appendix of modern imagination, that hid- 
eous thing called Conscience, which rides itsbladed 
chariot with malefic fury through our bound, un- 


148 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


alterable and bleeding past, but never casts a 
shadow before, much less throws a warning search- 
light into the future. Only this can be said : that 
the desperate method of a last hope was in my 
madness and, in the dire extremity, peradventure, 
I saw better the method than the madness of it. 

If anything was to be done it must be done in- 
stantly. If anything could serve us it was an instru- 
ment in the laboratory. It lay with us to try or let 
it go. Medical angels could not help us. The 
wisest of them would but consign their quondam 
counsellor to a padded cell in an insane retreat, and 
us and the path we saw lighted by a ray of hope, 
to perdition. I resolved to try. 

The unconscious muscles readily relaxed for me, 
and centering my thoughts on the desired end, I 
took the doctor’s hand and said slowly : 

“ I am speaking to you, doctor. Can you 
hear ?” 

Instantly he repeated: “Physician, heal thy- 
self.” 

It was a shock from which I had not recovered 
when I added : 

“ I want you to think for me and guide me. Can 
you do it ?” 

I confess that I shook with uncanny fear as he 
interrupted me, saying : 

“You want me to run my head into the new 
paralyzer while you shoot it off. Of course, I 
can.” 

It was doubtless explicable, but it frightened 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


149 


me, and had it not been for the sepulchral voice 
and the labored twisting of the semi-rigid lips, I _ 
should have been certain that in spite of the graw 
ity of the moment, Dr. Desmonde was really con- 
scious and playing a joke on me. I waited, con- 
fused and bewildered, when Kate suggested : 

“ It might be the best way to try him and see if 
he can and not for the first time or the last, I 
found the freshness of common sense in her advice. 

The doctor was easily guided to the laboratory, 
and seated himself in the operating chair to which 
the cap and wires of the instrument he referred to 
were attached. Then, placing the cap on his head 
he began to adjust it with evident care ; but his 
face was such an utterly expressionless blank that 
I asked anxiously : 

“ Are you sure, doctor, that you can do it ?” 

He made no reply, but presently pressed the 
spring which set the needle points against the 
scalp, and his hands fell, lifelessly, on the rests. 

I waited, in an agony of uncertainty, whether to 
trust his work and run the fearful risk, or give it 
up, when he muttered : 

“ Oh, fool, can’t you even open the disintegrator 
and connect the battery for me ?” 

My hand trembled as I obeyed. I was cold with 
terror as the fingers of the guage began to move. 

“ Stop it at fifteen. Now,” he said ; and me- 
chanically I turned the switch, sure that he must 
be conscious ; but his eyes were still closed and 
even if they had been open he could not have seen 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


150 

the guage. Then the new fear possessed me that 
if he saw through my eyes my timidity might also 
be influencing him. I had seen him let the guage 
mark forty for trivial operations. 

“ Fifteen is very weak, doctor,” I said, absently. 

Slowly and very faintly he replied : “ If I am 
doing this, obey me. If you are doing it, do it 
and be damned. An hour from now those cells 
would collapse of themselves and I with them ; 
but my heart and lungs are right. You may save 
me. Try it. Then put me in bed. Let me live 
in you for a week, then wake me. If it is a failure 
I shall die within an hour, which is just a week 
later than I thought. I ought to have died to- 
night. There. Let her go. I ^am thinking of it. 
Let her go. I see the knife. I see it falling. 
Oh, God ! Lenore !” 

The last word was a wild yell, just as I turned 
on the current. I snatched my hand away lest 
fear or pity should, make me turn it off ag^in. 
Cold perspiration fell like rain from me ; but I 
doubt if the doctor moved after the current 
touched his brain. 

When we removed the cap his head fell back 
upon the cushion. A faint flutter was perceptible 
over his heart and his breath showed on a mirror, 
but that was all. He was profoundly unconscious 
and appeared to be dying. His colorless, transpar- 
ent face, void of every line of care or thought, 
seemed already in the hands of Death. 

That our effort had failed was too evident for 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


I5I 

words. There was only the sad satisfaction that 
an expression of physical life remained, which, 
peradventure, as he said, we might succeed in 
stretching out over a week of calm, mechanical ex- 
istence, when otherwise it would have vanished in 
another hour of torture. 

To strengthen myself for work to come I stood 
for a moment, with folded arms, looking down into 
that strange, impassive face. Even then I could 
not understand it. Even so near to death, there 
was nothing there in common with other men. 

Vainly I tried to realize that the brain behind 
that broad, white forehead, was still and dead, and 
the chambers where the mind had showed such 
brilliant lights all black and deserted. 

Everything demanded and justified secrecy, till 
we had followed the doctor's instructions and 
tested the faint hope he had held out. Only his 
own profound knowledge and invariable success 
defended him from attacks which constantly threat- 
ened him, when he stood firmly in his own defence. 
If once it were known that he had fallen, it were 
better for him and for us that we were at the bot- 
tom of the sea than to be found arrogating to our- 
selves the conduct of his laboratory, operating 
upon him. So that even removing him to his 
room devolved entirely upon us two, and assumed 
serious proportions. 

The affinity of death was so complete that there 
was something preposterous in Kate's suggestion : 
“ You might see if he cannot help himself a little, 


152 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


while we help him,” but she said it in her calm, 
assuring way, which always carried with it some- 
thing like command, and I obeyed her. While we 
lifted him from the chair, I said : 

“We are taking you upstairs. You must lean 
on us and try to walk between us.” 

I know, now, that the words were unnecessary — 
probably unheard. He obeyed, but not in his pre- 
vious independent and aggressive way. His head 
lay in a dead weight on my shoulder, and he made 
no effort to balance himself ; but, from the mo- 
ment when we started, I was conscious of some- 
thing so dragging upon me that I was obliged to 
fix my will on each motion, before I could force a 
single muscle to respond. Then I noticed that 
precisely as I moved my foot the doctor moved 
his and it gave me my first hint concerning the 
meaning of his peculiar expression — living in me. 

For seven nights and days I did not leave his 
bed ; while the brave, heroic Kate was everything 
for both. 

As the end approached, though it was evident 
that neither of us could hold out much longer, we 
began to dread the close of our vigil as I, at least, 
never dreaded anything. It meant the drawing of 
the veil through which, already, we saw far too 
well ; the disappearing of the almost invisible star 
of hope which was our only light ; the closing of 
the door behind our friend which, while it yet stood 
ajar, comforted us with the assurance that at least 
his dear hand was still upon the latch. 


DESMONDE,- M. D. 


153 


To add to our anxieties Satan came also among 
them, with suggestions of the explanation which 
the world would soon require of us, to be adjudged 
and condemned by a bigoted professional sense of 
the fitness of things. 

I do not believe that any precautionary consider- 
ations would have infected our judgment or de- 
flected our steps ; but as the time approached 
when the foregone failure must be acknowledged it 
did, at least, produce foreboding. 

At first all callers had been turned away with the 
sufficient statement that Dr. Desmonde was ill and 
could not see them ; but during the last days 
Muckross had been literally stormed with messages 
and inquiries — some of which had already become 
difficult to answer. Even the daily papers had 
taken it up and were publishing astonishing state- 
ments concerning the illness of the great neurolo- 
gist, and the awful loss which it would be to the. 
world, should anything serious befall the brilliant 
explorer in medical electricity. 

Amid these clouds, that were constantly darken- 
ing, the last hour came. We removed all indica- 
tions of illness from the room, leaving it in its 
most natural disorder. Kate waited outside the 
door, and I sat down upon the bed, taking the 
doctor’s lifeless hand in mind, as the setting sun 
marked the finish of the seventh day. 

I am not sure whether any hope remained or 
not. I had not the remotest idea even what I 
ought to do to rouse the doctor, and as I sat there 


154 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


I simply tried to picture to myself every possible 
contingency, that I might be prepared to meet 
whatever came. 

What seemed most probable was that by some 
effort I should throw off the burden that had con- 
stantly oppressed me, and, as the result, see the 
faint signs of life gradually disappear till I knew 
that my friend was dead. What I most dreaded 
was some struggle of the mind to clutch the shat- 
tered brain again, and that I must sit helplessly 
by, and see him die in agony. 

Holding his hand, in that awful suspense, I 
fondled the fatal ring, for a moment; then, in a 
low, uncertain voice, began : 

“ Doctor, your week of rest is over. This is the 
time when you told me to rouse you. When you 
v/ake you will feel well and warm and strong. You 
will be free from pain or any kind of trouble. Your 
brain will be clear, your mind active and ready for 
work. You will not remember anything that has 
happened since you left the hospital. You will 
open your eyes — ” \ 

If I had been speaking to an Egyptian mummy 
to see it follow those words, open its eyes, look 
into mine and smile, I could not have been better 
stunned. 

The lids did not quiver and tremble, laboriously 
dragging themselves apart from eyes that looked 
bewilderedly out into haze. They opened delib- 
erately, calmly, intelligently; just as I had seen 
them open hundreds of times when the office-bell 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


155 


roused the doctor from an afternoon nap. They 
turned, till they met mine, and smiled. It was the 
only result for which I was wholly unprepared. 

I sat there blankly staring till the smile faded in 
a look of anxiety and the doctor muttered: 

“ I say, old man, arc you dying or do you see a 
ghost ?” 

Then I managed to reply : It is nothing. 

Doc. Thank heaven it is nothing. You came 
home from the hospital feeling so badly and have 
been in such a strange state since, that we were 
awfully frightened. But you look right again 
now.” 

“ Right 7 I am right as the bank,” he replied. 
“ I must have swallowed too much cloroform. 
Operated on the worst case of goitre I ever struck. 
Frightful hemorrhage, in spite of me. Had to hold 
my nose right over the chloroform frame for near an 
hour, you know. My knife slipped once, and by 
Jove ! it’s a miracle I didn’t killher. I thought I’d 
cut her bally throat, you know. Ah well, she’s all 
right now. She’ll be fit as a fiddle in a week, and 
never dream how near she came to knocking at the 
pearly gates for Peter. 

“ Come, man, brace up ; your muscles are shak- 
ing yet. You look as if you’d lost fifty pounds. 
Can’t you see that I was never better in my life ? 
A long sleep has simply done me worlds of good. 
And by the way, how goes the enemy ? I’m rav- 
enously hungry. Howl for Kate, will you ?” 

He stretched and yawned and then, without an 


156 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


effort, raised himself on his elbow to see his man- 
tel clock,, exclaiming : “ I say, ten to seven! It 

isn’t ten to seven to-morrow night, is it ? Man 
alive, I had an eye to take out this morning. Why 
the fellow will get well if I neglect him in this way. 
Gangway, old chap. I must be up.” 

I had not the strength to reply or to resist him, 
but Kate came in, with her imperturbable calmness 
and inimitable laugh, remarking: “You don’t 
get up the night, doctor, not for all the eyes in the 
city. You’ll have your dinner just as soon as it can 
be brought, but you’ll have it in bed. It’s time 
you experienced the pleasure of being kept be- 
tween sheets against your will.” 

“ Hear that ?” said the doctor, with his peculiar 
smile. “ By all the little fishes you’d think I had 
a wife instead of a housekeeper. In the meantime 
I’m going to get up. Think of that, Kate.” 

“ Think of nothing,” Kate replied, quietly mov- 
ing about, drawing the blinds and turning on the 
light. “ Mr. Willard is near dead if you are not. 
He hasn’t left your bed since you lay down, and 
he’ll get no rest if you get up. Without your 
leave I’ve told everyone that you would not be out 
till morning. I’ll bring up dinner for the two of 
you and you can eat it here.” 

“Well, let her go. Smith,” the doctor replied 
throwing himself back on his pillow. “ Only trot 
out your dinner P D Q.” 

In the morning no excuse would restrain him. 
He was disturbed, at first, when he learned the 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


15 


length of time that he had been unconscious ; but 
he credited it all to cloroform and agreed with the 
press and his friends that he was much better for 
the rest. Life moved on again, as usual, while we 
looked in vain for any sign of loss or injury, or for 
any return of the suffering. 

By degrees I ventured to test him, but it was six 
months later before I tried that fatal reminder 
which, if it failed, was to assure us of the complete 
success of the operation. 

He was rollicking with Jack, in the snuggery. I 
was at the organ, which no longer annoyed him, 
but, on the contrary, frequently felt his own 
fingers. Without warning I sent the strains of the 
Resurrection Hymn echoing through the room, 
while I sang : “ Hosanna in the highest — in the 
highest.” 

Without turning from Jack the doctor remarked : 

“ I say, old man, you should stand on a sheet of 
paper to reach that highest highest properly. We 
had a nurse in the hospital, in London, who could 
just get up there to perfection. Whatever was her 
name, now ? Blessed if I can remember. I have 
her portrait down in the den, in fond memory of a 
forgotten past — or because it fits a handsome 
frame. She’s the one I was telling you about. 
You remember ?” 

How long I had looked forward to that final 
test, feeling that if it proved effectual my happi- 
ness would be complete ; and it only engulfed me 
in sadness and regret beyond the power of words. 


158 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


The one real thing in Dr. Desmonde’s life — 
more real than his theories, his discoveries, his in- 
ventions or his suffering — was his love for the lost 
Lenore. It had permeated and impregnated every 
thought and ambition ; diffusing a beautiful, albeit 
gentle lustre, in an all-pervading undertone, warm- 
ing all the morbid' neutral tints and subduing even 
the glaring lights of torture. It had restrained 
and incited him, curbed him and urged him on. 
It had calmed him and inspired him and, so far as 
anything could, it had filled his life with joy. 
That beatific moment when I watched him at the 
organ indicated the possession of a nugget rarely 
found in all the gold-fields of life. It was that 
which had held him above the roughness where he 
often tried to hide himself. It was that which had 
idealized him, everywhere. It was that of which I 
had robbed him. After six months of searching 
for any sign of loss, I discovered that he had lost 
the very life-blood of his soul. 

** The one glory of my life is that she loved me,” 
he said that night in the den. And, now, “ What- 
ever was her name ? Blessed if I can remember.” 

It was easy to understand how that last cry, just 
as the current touched his brain, indicated that his 
thoughts were as actively upon the woman whom he 
loved as on the accident, and the result was inevi- 
table ; but it failed to relieve my regret. Sadly 
enough I said : 

“ Didn’t you tell me, Doc., that her name was 
Lenore?” 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


159 


*‘Very like. It sounds . familiar,” he replied. 
“ But look at this bally little beggar, will you ? 
He’s actually learned a new trick. Stand up^ 
Jack.” 

Down in the den I tried once more, suddenly 
opening the golden gates. He glanced at the face 
with a smile of recognition, and began at once to 
talk of the accident in the calmest manner. 

“ How horrified the world would be,” he said, 
“ if it knew of all the accidents that snuff out lives 
upon the operating table. Blood-poisoning, septi- 
cemia, heart-failure, collapse, and heaven knows 
what not, are cloaks cut to order to cover a multi- 
tude of surgical sins. The simplest cut sometimes re- 
veals what no one could suspect. The best experi- 
enced operator can never be sure what his knife 
will do, even while he holds it in his hand. I tell 
you surgeons have cause for no end of charity 
among themselves, for no one knows when his own 
turn will come to make a slip. 

“ I used to blame myself awfully, you know, for 
dropping that knife ; but, good heavens, I didn’t 
mean to drop it. If I had tried I couldn’t have 
held it so that it would fall point first and cut the 
artery. I was only a boy, and it was an operation 
which I should dread with all my heart to-day. 
Then think of the shock to a fellows’ nerves, when 
a patient, with a yawning pit to the very inside of 
her, starts in to sing the Resurrection Hymn. Her 
chances were not one in ten of living through the 
operation, anyv^ray. I tell you I have performed 


l6o DESMONDE, M. D. 

many a successful operation in which I was vastly 
more to blame than for that accident. The thing 
upset my mental equilibrium for a time, for some- 
how I couldn’t see it in any light but murder. You 
know how it used to bother me, sometimes, even 
after you came to Muckross. When an idea gets 
itself so well established in a fellow’s brain, it is 
next to impossible to persuade the mind to let go 
of it.” 

“ But didn’t you tell me that you loved each 
other, Doc.?” I asked. 

He laughed a low, peculiar laugh and answered : 

“ I used to fancy so. What freaks a boy’s heart 
will play with him, especially when it is thwarted. 
I even imagined I loved her long after she was 
dead. I suppose the only quick and natural cure 
for love is marriage. If she had lived, and we had 
married, we might have torn each other’s eyes out, 
long ago. However, I’ve well outgrown all those 
old sentiments, at last ; and I’m bally glad of it.” 

Verily it is woe to the world because of offences, 
but infinitely worse is the woe unto him by whom 
the offence cometh. 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


l6l 


CHAPTER XII. 

Dr. Desmonde’s case was an excellent object 
lesson of his system, but I would I might have 
learned it in some other way, or gone in ignorance. 
Shortly, too, an incident occurred making more 
poignant my regret over the unfortunate reach of 
the operation. It was while I was in the smoking- 
room of the hotel, waiting for a gentleman who 
was late in keeping an appointment . 

There was only one other man in the room and 
being preoccupied I had paid him no attention, so 
that it somewhat surprised me, when, after half 
an hour of silence, he asked, abruptly : - 

Are you much acquainted in the city, sir ?” 

“ Not well,” I replied, without looking up ; but 
the lack of cordiality to a stranger rebuked me and 
I added : “ Possibly enough to be of service. 

What is it?” 

Only a name I ran across in the paper,” he 
said. “ Desmonde, M. D. I used to know a doc- 
tor sailing under that name, who disappeared in a 
peculiar way, and I was wondering if he had run in 
and anchored here.” 

It occurred to me that he referred to the escaped 
convict, and I replied, accordingly : “ Dr. Des- 

monde is an old figurehead of the profession here, 
with a reputation that is practically world-wide.” 

With a grunt he replied : “That’s no more than 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


162 

the Desmonde I knew could have boasted, long 
ago, if he hadn’t gone to pieces, and given our 
visiting surgeon a chance to steal his thunder. It 
was a damned dirty game, and that’s what troubles 
me, for I was a party to it. He was a corker was 
Desmonde. He was younger than I, but he was 
senior in the hospital where I was junior surgeon. 
I was after a Gov. billet, and I got it by holding 
my tongue and letting the visiting surgeon make 
his eternal reputation out of a brillant bit of work 
which Desmonde did, in the operating room, just 
before he went to pieces.” 

Instantly my attention was riveted — welded. 
But the stranger had forgotten me. The name in 
the paper had recalled a reminiscent vision that 
was absorbing him. He was talking to the toe of 
his boot. “ It was a devilish difficult bit of work, 
on one of the nurses,” he went on. “ I was the 
only surgeon assisting him. It was the first time 
in the history of surgery that the operation was 
performed without a single drawback, and it is still 
the record case for quick and complete recovery. 
But the strain on his nerves was too much for him. 
He went daft before he could get away from the 
table. Then the visiting surgeon took up the case, 
of course, and I’ll be damned if he didn’t put it on 
record in his own name, operation and everything, 
while I held my tongue to pay him for getting the 
appointment I was after.” 

Here at last he glanced toward me and stopped 
abruptly. A defiant smile gathered about his eyes, 


DESMONDE, M. D 163 

and they opened wider, in astonishment, as he 
muttered : 

“ If you are contemplating strangling me, I ad- 
mit that I deserve it, but I can tell you at once 
that you’re not the man who can do it.” 

To gain time to collect my wits I answered : “ I 
beg your pardon, sir, I was contemplating nothing 
of the kind. I once heard a very different version 
of that same operation and the facts you stated 
amazed me beyond expression. Do you mind tell- 
ing me more of the particulars?” 

“ Not the least in the world,” he said, stretching 
out his legs like a sailor, and stuffing his hands in 
his pockets. “ He was cool as a middy in a ham- 
mock on shore. I took it he didn’t know what he 
was doing, and watched to see him make a false 
cut. I thought him a boy who had cheated the 
faculty into supposing him a man. But he came 
nearer being a god, instead. From trucks to keel- 
son there wasn’t a flaw in him. He even did the 
bandaging himself and drew up the blanket, as 
though he was only an attendant. When they 
took her out, however, and I went up to congratu- 
late him, he struck me one blow in the chest that 
nearly knocked me out. Then he tore off his oper- 
ating coat and rushed from the room. We caught 
him just as he was smashing in his own door be- 
cause it was locked, and it took the whole of us to 
hold him and get him into a jacket. In the after- 
noon we sent him to an asylum, up north, with two 
powerful fellows to guard him. 


164 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


“ I packed his chest for him and, thinking that 
if he ever came straight he’d like to have them at 
hand, I put in his diplomas and a lot of valuable 
notes, some of his best books, and some dandy in- 
struments. Hang it ! I’ve always wished I’d 
saved them for myself, for poor Desmonde never 
needed them again. 

“ They took a private compartment in the train ; 
for when he went bad he’d howl that a knife was 
falling and killing the patient, and try to strangle 
himself. A knife did slip from his fingers and fall 
into the wound, just at the end of the operation ; 
but it only tipped a small artery. He nipped it, 
instantly, leaving the forceps in till the next dress- 
ing, as the patient was coming out. It did no 
harm, but it probably gave him a hint that he 
worked up in his ravings.” 

“ And you say the patient lived ?” I gasped. 

Lived ?” he exclaimed. “ Good God, she was 
at work in the wards again in three weeks, and the 
last I heard of her she was still nurse in the same 
hospital. She’s the handsomest woman I ever saw ; 
and whatever she wanted to stay nurse for is be- 
yond me. As for Desmonde, when the train reached 
their destination the guards unlocked the door to 
find the two attendants unconscious and the doctor 
gone. The papers had it they were drugged and 
heaven knows what not ; but the' truth is Desmonde 
was a holy terror at mesmerism and, crazy as he 
was, he had put those men to sleep, slipped his 
cable, got out of a locked compartment, got his 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


165 

chest from the luggage van, and so completely dis- 
appeared that no trace was ever found of him.’' 

The man who had delayed me came in, during 
the last sentence, and 1 went away with him, re- 
turning to the hotel, in the evening, only to learn 
that the stranger was surgeon on a war-ship which 
was then moving out of the harbor under sealed 
orders. 

What joy I might have carried to Muckross, had 
I not already deprived my friend of power to ap- 
preciate the glorious news, and any desire to enter 
into the longed-for life that was still possible. I 
could touch the spring and open the golden gates 
of fact upon a supreme reality of joy ; but he 
would simply smile, as he did on the painted face, 
and talk of the erratic fancies of a boy in a Lon- 
don hospital. Even the news that the accident 
was not fatal would be no consolation, now, for it 
no longer troubled him. Think it over as I would 
there seemed nothing to be gained but much that 
might be lost by telling him anything ; unless the 
old sentiments could be revived. 

To that end I bent every thought and energy. 
First I wondered if hypnotism might not serve me ; 
and an opportunity to try, at least, was rendered 
easy. The doctor had so entirely lost all dread of 
it that he proposed, one night, that I should ex- 
periment with him and see if I had not the power 
he had always claimed for me. He helped me in 
every possible way, but try as I would I could not 
produce the slightest effect. 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


1 66 

“ Never mind, old boy,” he said, laughing, when 
I gave up in despair. “ I am as sure as ever that 
you have the power, only you lack the knack. 
Talent is something, but tact is everything.” 

Then I tried to reason out some power in a 
counter-current from disintegrated electricity, 
which could undo the work of the other ; and sur- 
reptitiously I studied and experimented in the 
laboratory, only to discover how far beyond me 
was any such possibility. 

Kate suggested a resort to Lenore, and we won- 
dered how we had neglected it so long. Of course 
she believed him dead. How quickly she would 
come to our assistance if she knew the truth. 

We thought of the cable and the mail, but in 
the end I accepted Kate’s advice to go myself, and 
fetch her. 

Dr. Desmonde never asked questions. He 
accepted the fact that urgent business required me 
in London, with cordial regret, earnest hopes for a 
successful issue, and the demand that on its comple- 
tion I return to Muckross for the rest of my life. 

So we sat together in the den, for my last even- 
ing, with the onyx table and its neglected shrine 
as ever between us. After a long pause the doctor 
suddenly began to speak, as though he were only 
continuing a subject that had been under discus- 
sion during the silence. He said : 

“ I suppose it is really an excellent quality of 
our mental mechanism, this constant friction and 
disinclination to what we idealize as satisfaction. 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


167 


“ A contented mind a continual feast ! Bah ! It 
is only a hog, sleeping in the sun, after a bucket of 
swill. But it is irritating to be forever goaded on 
and never to come nearer than Moses on Pisgah 
to the panorama of tranquil and serene satisfac- 
tion. Each peak we climb offers us but better 
views of better lands, and with dogged endurance 
we must submit to be newly tantalized by hope 
instead of satisfied by glad fruition. The thrill of 
joy at each laborious achievement comes tainted 
with restless passion to be at some new obstruc- 
tion, or gain some distant possibility disclosed, if 
indeed it is not created, by the last conquest. 

“ For years we have been struggling for power 
to touch the brain with scientific certainty, safety, 
and result. We have attained it. Why not be 
satisfied ? We have worked for ability to recon- 
struct the brain and teach the mind to adjust the 
physical to nature’s laws. To-day we can do it. 

Is it not enough ? Alas, we are men, and eternal 
fitness guards us against that beatific lethargy. 

“ We have divided electricity into what we call ^ 
the ‘ Red,’ and the ‘Blue,’ according to the colors 
expressed in the tubes, with the probability of 
of another integral which has not yet expressed 
itself. We have caught the Blue and found it 
capable of all and more than we hoped. But now 
we are tormented to capture the Red and deter- 
mine what that can accomplish. 

“Red is man’s danger signal, from lights and 
flags to sanitary cards ; and Blue his favorite, from 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


1 68 

the cradle to the grave. Nature puts it the othet 
way. Red is expressive of development and life, 
and blue is in all the essential elements of death. 
It is so with electricity. For years the combined 
current has blunderingly served both purposes. 
The rheumatic patient, clutching the knobs of the 
galvanic battery, has felt his nerves tingle with 
new life, while the fellow collared and cuffed to the 
electrocuting chair has found his life go out, like a 
snuffed candle, while his neck and wrists frizzled 
and fried. One was benefited by the Red, in a 
current too weak for the Blue to be injurious ; 
the other killed by the Blue, in a current so strong 
that the Red became a tongue of fire. We know, 
now, that one quarter of the current of Blue, 
alone, will kill as quickly, causing instant and total 
paralysis, and that ten times increased it cannot be 
made to singe a hair. We know that, guaged to 
the operation the Blue invariably carries death — 
paralysis. And we have every reason to believe 
that, properly manipulated, the Red will carry 
life ; life to the minutest nerve centers that are par- 
alyzed ; life to stagnant or latent functions; and 
life to the whole body, at least beyond the re- 
motest possibility of aid from artificial respiration. 

“ There is no possible necessity that death 
should be the end, even after certain processes of 
decomposition have set in, till pectuous change 
actually takes place. The patient may be dead, 
unquestionably dead, but until crystallization be- 


DESMONDE, M. D. 169 

gins no intelligent physician in the world, to-day, 
would deny that a return of life is possible. 

“ Dead men have revived as late as the funeral — 
and doubtless later — by some natural instigation. 
, Artificial respiration has renewed life in many a 
corpse ; and it is no new statement that only the 
knowledge and the means are lacking to prevent 
innumerable more unnecessary burials. 

' *‘The difficulty has been to impart and continue 
the suggestions of life through all of the functions 
simultaneously ; for when the first faint struggle of 
the heart and lungs to revive finds only death and 
stagnation everywhere, it is apt to yield to the pre- 
vailing influence of collapse. 

“ Everything indicates that the possibility lies in 
the red current ; from the restoration of life to 
paralyzed parts to the resurrection of the dead. It 
seems strange that we did not long ago see the im- 
portance of such an adjunct. It can be done, 
Willard, and it shall be done. We shall yet say to 
Lazarus, ‘ Come forth,’ and to the widow’s son, 
‘ Rise up and walk.’ We shall not only make men 
sound and self-sustaining, enabling them to guard 
against evil in the future and repair the errors of 
the past, we shall even rob hell of its victims, death 
of its sting, and the grave of its victory. Simple, 
intelligent common sense will make it incumbent 
for men to live as they ought to live, in honor and 
health, and die as they ought to die, painlessly and 
happily, in harmony with nature’s laws of degener- 
ation, through a well old age. That is all and 


I/O DESMONDE, M. D. 

enough. They will be ready, then, for any eter- 
nity. 

“ Beyond that is folly. Immunity from death 
for mutable flesh through an elixir of life or chariot 
of fire is simple absurdity. But suffering, pain and 
premature collapse are evils and the result of evil ; 
and no evil ever pertains to or results from harmony 
with law. 

“ It is only to account for endless suffering in 
an alleged dispensation of omnipotent love, that 
Christian theories have been forced to represent a 
god forever doing, causing and permitting evil on 
account of the good that will come out of it. He 
sends trials to produce patience, suffering to bring 
meekness, chastisement to reduce us to submission, 
retribution for humility, affliction to endear us to 
himself ; with the incessant sinister suggestion of 
future remuneration. 

“ Intelligent people preach it and claim to believe 
it, and yet there’s not a child who does not know 
that suffering is simply the necessary and inevitable 
result of broken laws, and that unless a law has been 
broken there can be no suffering, either mental or 
physical. 

“ Confusion take the degenerating theories urg- 
ing us to throw the responsibility for our sufferings 
upon some mystery of omnific love. 

“ Doing evil that good may come is a godly 
quality, according to all scripture, even to the 
ghastly sacrifice on Calvary ; but it is wrong, in- 
jurious and damnable as are most of the godly 


DESMONDE, M. D. 171 

qualities when demonstrated or emulated in any- 
more practical way than through the ground-glass 
haze of sanctimonious, plastic vituperation from 
the pulpit. 

“ The best that is claimed for God is that he 
flogs his faithful followers continually ; that those 
whom he loveth he chasteneth and scourgeth every 
son in whom his soul delighteth. The worst that 
can be said of nature is that erring ones are flogged 
when they are found in the wrong way. 

“ No, Willard, evil is punishment, always. It is 
never precurser. It is condemnation. It is not 
admonition. It is always the result of wrong, 
never a warning from error. No evil could ever be 
dealt out for any good to result from it. It is al- 
ways the direct consequence of some disregard of 
inexorable law, and if the law had not been disre- 
garded the consequence would not have occurred. 

“ It no more follows that a man is loved than 
that he is hated. It no more indicates that he is 
guilty than that he is innocent. I need not will- 
fully burn myself for the burn to smart. I am not 
responsible when a robber stabs me in the back. 
If I am within the range of the consequence of a 
broken law I must suffer accordingly. Innocence 
and guilt are unknown terms in nature’s jurisdic- 
tion. Harmony alone is indispensable, and an act 
of mine which is out of harmony may cause no end 
of suffering to others, while I may go entirely free. 
Only when the world appreciates this, and forgets 
to believe in the forgiveness of sin, can men re- 


172 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


ceive a perfect answer to the imperfect prayer : 
‘ Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from 
evil.’ 

“ Well, I have great work laid out for me, while 
you are away ; and in the meantime may our dis- 
tant friend Professor Roentgen develop the won- 
derful possibilities lying in the Blue rays. Do you 
remember that three years ago we were speaking 
of the power to reach germ centers by rays of elec- 
tric light ? I believe that our friend will yet regret, 
if he does not already, that he gave the world too 
soon an undeveloped and imperfect theory. The 
world only abuses, denounces, then discards such 
gifts. Premature delivery has been the mistake of 
thousands and the death of many an immaculate 
conception. But when our system is perfected and 
the Roentgen possibilities transformed to facts, 
carrying death to the parasite, what will not hu- 
manity owe to the dancing spark which clicked on 
the key of Franklin’s kite. 

“ Verily the nations that dwell in darkness shall 
see a great light, and a fire shall be kindled in 
Hejaz that in Bashra shall cause the camels’ 
necks to shine. It will be only an electric light, I 
grant you, but it will flash in the form of the tree 
of life, and the leaves of the tree will be for the 
healing of the nations.” 

Now just another word and I’m away to London. 
It was a word of parting from Dr. Desmonde’s lips 
and it came to my heart, at least, with all the 
beautiful pathos of his strange life. 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


173 


I had entered the carriage. He stood on the 
pavement. He held my hand in both of his and 
said : 

“ Good bye, old friend, good bye. May all evil 
be far from you and all good be with you till we 
meet again.” 


CHAPTER XIII. 

“And then methought the scene was changed.” 
It was a small, plain parlor, resorted to under cer- 
tain restrictions by the nurses of one of the great 
London hospitals. I was waiting there for the 
matron, to whom I had sent my card. She entered 
in the simplest hospital uniform without a single 
ornament ; yet, it was like a queen in purple com- 
ing into her throne-room. 

I saw a grand, sweet woman ; with a face that 
was strong and full of courage, but gentle and 
beautiful ; with eyes that were large and dark — 
angelic ; with hair irrepressibly waving and whiter 
than snow. She glanced at the card she still held> 
repeated my name and, in a voice that might, in- 
deed, have sung the Resurrection Hymn, said : 

“ I am nurse Lenore.” 

My one incentive was to shrink away and disap- 
pear. Failing that, I would have fallen on my 


174 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


knees before the beautiful woman who had loved 
my friend. 

Words lost their meaning. I had planned a hun- 
dred openings, but I simply said : 

“ Madam, my errand is peculiar. Can you give 
me a few minutes to explain it ?” 

She glanced at her watch and motioned me to a 
seat, replying : 

“ I can spare you ten minutes.” 

Ten minutes for the story of a life ! And yet 
but a few points were of vital importance ; only the 
one, in fact, that Dr. Desmonde lived. I could 
surely say that in ten minutes, and began : 

“ Doubtless, madam, you remember Dr. Des- 
monde?” 

There I stopped abruptly. There was no doubt 
that she remembered him. Her cheeks flushed for 
an instant. Her lips drew together. Her eyes 
changed, but it was not a look of love which came 
into them. Then, with absolutely calm indifference 
she replied : 

“ I knew him long ago, when he was connected 
with this hospital.” 

“ But you do not know that he is still alive !” I 
exclaimed, to which she quietly replied : 

‘‘ One would be poorly informed who did not 
know that Dr. Desmonde was alive. He was ill, a 
year ago, but I read that he quickly recovered.” 

“ I am making a mistake,” I muttered. “ I 
thought I was speaking to the Nurse Lenore upon 


DESMONDE, M. D. 1 75 

whom he performed his last operation in this 
hospital.” 

I am the woman, sir,” she replied. “ If you 
have come upon a mission from Dr. Desmonde, I 
shall remember that he saved my life.” 

“ No, no, madam, you are not the one,” I re- 
peated. “ He loved her and she loved him.” 

. “ Sir, it is enough that I am the woman you 
seek. I beg you to proceed,” she said, glancing 
at her watch. I was beside myself. I started to 
my feet. 

“ I have been his nearest friend for years,” I 
ejaculated. “ I know, at least, what he has suf- 
fered through his love for you, combined with what 
he thought the fatal result of that operation. It 
almost cost him his life, at the time. It followed 
him relentlessly and came still nearer costing his 
life in what you so calmly speak of as his recent 
illness. All for you, madam. Do you ” 

She only looked up, but it was quite enough. 
Her eyes were more beautiful than any artist could 
have painted them. Youth still suffused her face, 
in strange harmony with the snowy hair. Her 
features were richer in noble qualities, and less in 
nothing, than the face under the golden arch. But 
what did it signify when her composure was not 
ruffled by a tremor as she replied : 

“ Dr. Desmonde’s ideal woman must be immacu- 
late. His ideals are all as high as human concep- 
tion can attain. I knew that I was unworthy, but 
I loved him and I did not appreciate how abhor- 


176 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


rently unfit I was, till I saw myself as he saw me 
when he discovered my shame and left me without 
a word* 

“ I can understand the awful shock, to find that 
he had loved a fallen woman ; and had I been 
wiser I would have saved him it. My curse is bitter 
and my cross is heavy. Tell him of these white 
hairs in evidence. But it will not help you, sir, 
to accomplish your mission to try and add to my 
lot by accusations that I am still filling his heart 
with bitterness and endangering his life. 

“ He discovered my shame while I lay uncon- 
scious on the operating table. I knew that he 
would. I meant that he should. I had tried in 
vain to tell him with my tongue. I would have 
no other surgeon perform the operation, because 
I would rather have died, for his sake, than that 
any one else should know. In pride and ignor- 
ance I overlooked the awfulness, and thought 
only of circumstances which seemed to me to miti- 
gate it. I dreamed that if my life was spared he 
would come back to me, reproachfully, or even 
angrily, perhaps, when I should tell him all, and he 
would forgive me and love me still. I left a letter 
to be given him in case I died. But I neither died 
nor did he come to me. Then I realized how im- 
possible it would have been for him to look into 
my face with anything but hatred and horror in 
his eyes, and how he went away to save me. And I 
know, now, how all the mitigating features in the 
world would still fail to palliate, and that no love 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


177 


could ever cancel the curse or abrogate the shame 
of a fallen woman/' 

Longer endurance of this was simply impossible, 
and I interrupted her with the exclamation : 

Why, madam, you surely know that the man 
was utterly irresponsible and crazy when he went 
away.” 

“ I know that for my sake he let the world be- 
lieve it,” she replied. ‘‘When his skill had saved 
my worthless life his kiridness sacrificed everything 
to save my poor name from open rebuke. I know 
that he abandoned the most brilliant career which 
London ever promised, and stole away, under pre- 
tense of madness, to protect a fallen woman, whom 
he had innocently loved, from being publicly dis- 
carded and disgraced by him. Sir, I know it all. 
I appreciate. Please do not keep me longer. Tell 
me what it is you want. I am ready to comply 
with any reasonable request which Dr. Desmonde 
makes.” 

“ Madame,” I said, desperately, “ by anything 
that can make an oath strong enough to receive 
your confidence, believe Dr. Desmonde was insane 
and wholly unconscious of what he was doing when 
he left the amphitheatre, the hospital and England. 
It was absolutely nothing but the thought that he 
had killed you and he believes it still.” 

“ Yes, in my weak state, even that gentlest expres- 
sion of his abhorrence ought to have killed me,” 
she replied, slowly. “ Nor was it through any wish 
of mine that I lived on.” 


1/8 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


I clutched the knob of the door and angrily re- 
peated : “ O madam, try and understand a sim- 

ple English sentence. I tell you that at this mo- 
ment Dr. Desmonde thinks that you were dying 
when they took you from the amphitheatre ; dying 
from what he thought was a fatal mistake which he 
had made. It drove him mad because he loved 
you. It had not the remotest connection with 
what you foolishly call your shame. No surgeon 
under heaven could have made the discovery you 
speak of. It is only a nursery goblin to frighten 
young girls into chastity. And besides Dr. Des- 
monde knew the whole story weeks before. He 
knew it long before he asked you to marry him. 
You told him, yourself, once when he was mesmer- 
izing you. By an accident I learned that you were 
still alive. He does not know it. I came at once 
to you, and out of respect to the fact that I am his 
friend and for him have made this journey, simply 
to consult with you, will you not appoint some 
time when you will listen and try to understand 
and believe all that I have to say ?” 

She replied : I shall be free from eight till 

half-past nine, to-night. Then I will listen.” 

She did listen, without a word cr gesture, till I 
had recounted the entire situation. Then she 
said : “ I am sure it had better remain as it is.” 

“ O madam,” I cried. “ Don’t send me back 
with that. Have you so forgotten that once, at 
least, you loved him ?” 

“ He has forgotten,” she replied, “ and it is well. 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


179 


He might pity and pardon, a flaw, but of all men 
he appreciates perfection. The flower whose petal 
a worm had gnawed could never give him joy.'’ 

“ Has his suffering convinced you of nothing?” 

“ Of this,” she interrupted me, “ and I wonder 
it failed to convince you, too. The mortification 
of a master that his hand had made a fatal slip, 
pampered and idealized a boy’s infatuation for the 
victim. The two were interwoven at the start and 
grew together ; the cloak of remorse about the 
idol covering its feet of clay. Your operation 
obliterated the remorse and the love disappeared. 

“ If you could, as you suggest, restore the old 
condition and then say to him, ^ It was all a mistake. 
The knife did no harm. She is alive and well,’ 
believe me, sir, the same double result would be as 
quickly accomplished and in a way that would be 
sadder for him, sadder for his friend, and infinitely 
sadder for the woman who loved him.” 

“ Have you so entirely ceased to love that you 
can calmly sacrifice the chance ?” I asked. 

“ The quality of my sacrifice need not be dis- 
cussed, sir,” she replied. “We are talking of Dr. 
Desmonde. Let us confine ourselves to his welfare, 
as he would confine himself to ours. 

“ Perhaps, through youthful indignation and 
pity, he did love me, even when he knew ; and 
it is balm enough, for me, to know it. I am still 
sure that maturer judgment would recoil from the 
union which he then proposed ; and I am surer, sir, 
that if memory of that early love remained and 


i8o 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


ideal honor urged him to make good those prom- 
ises, I should, myself, refuse him. I am outcast 
from purity. I know it, now. I am unworthy. I 
would not become his wife.’’ 

“ O madam, you are exasperating,” I cried. 
“You have wrapped your love in swaddling clothes 
of abnegation, and buried it so deep in a manger 
of self-derogation that you see only the blanket and 
the straw. Love looks to the future, not to the 
past. Tell me ; you do not doubt that you would 
have Dr. Desmonde’s fullest confidence ?” 

“Coals have our confidence when we thrust 
them in the grate,” she said. “ It is diamonds that 
we wear as ornaments. I have heard that a drop 
of acid will change a diamond to a bit of anthracite, 
but I am sure that no alchemy could ever change 
the coal back to diamond. Though innocent as a 
diamond in the chemist’s hand, I still became a bit 
of coal. It may lie even better in my power to 
warm those in the cold of poverty and light up the 
darkness of pain ; but it can never be for me to 
glisten and adorn the hand of the man I love. 

“ I have thought it all over too many times, sir, 
not to know. By day and night, through all these 
years, I have never once forgotten it.” 

At last her voice trembled and stopped. At last 
the lustrous spirit of what, in others, had been 
tears, shone in her beautiful eyes. At last she had 
said it : “ The man I love.” And in the silence 

that followed a thought came to me, so simple, so 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


I8l 


in accord with my life at Muckross, that its first 
result was wonder that it came so late. 

“ In another way you have been doing precisely 
what Dn Desmonde did,” I said, earnestly. “Your 
mind has fortified itself in morbid and misguiding 
centers, till it is beyond the reach of argument. 
You are wrong and you would be glad to believe 
it, but you can’t. You would be glad to stop 
thinking those unhappy thoughts, if only for the 
relief that it would be to you. But they come 
back incessantly and cause only a renewal of the 
same useless suffering. It has no compensative 
benefit for you or anyone. It only impairs your 
usefulness. It keeps your body strained with fruit- 
less sighs and your brain exhausted in utterly vain, 
worn-out regrets. 

“ There are pleasanter and more profitable sub- 
jects to which you would be glad to revert as easily 
as your mind runs to that, but you dread long, 
waking hours at night, knowing to what your 
thoughts will turn in spite of every effort; and you 
dread old age, with that ever haunting memory 
constantly growing stronger and more vindictive ; 
constantly reminding you of what you call your 
shame ; making you cringe and shudder, over and 
over again, all to no possible relief or change or 
benefit. Are you not tired of it ? Tell me, hon- 
estly, would you not gladly be rid of it ?” 

To my very great surprise she interrupted me to 
answer : 

“Yes. I would.” 


i 82 


DESMONDS, M. D. 


Then let us drop the errand which brought me 
here,” I said. “ And let me help you, instead. I 
have explained the process by which your mind 
can be kept from those distorted centers, as simple 
and harmless as locking a door in one of your 
wards, to prevent people from passing that way. 

Dr. Desmonde cannot recognize you, you are 
so changed, and he so sure that you are dead. 
You have only to say to him that your mind 
clings to an incident of long ago, impairing your 
usefulness and causing you needless suffering. He 
will not ask you a single question — even your 
name. If he talks at all it will be upon some sub- 
ject which intuition guides him to think will 
interest you ; very likely on some original notion 
he has for improving hospital conditions. 

“ Now I will gladly leave all the rest to your 
own judgment afterward, if you will only do 
yourself and Dr. Desmonde the justice to go to 
him for this one operation. If, after that, you 
still believe it is better to leave matters they are, 
I promise to be content.” 

Briefly she replied, “ I will go to him.” 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


183 


CHAPTER XIV. . 

And once again the scene was changed ; this 
time to the dear old den, with dear old Desmonde 
across the onyx table. I had only arrived in the 
morning and he had spent the day recounting his 
great conquests during my absence. Fingers work 
deftly when the trade is well learned, and already 
the mighty possibilities which he rehearsed the 
evening before my departure had beeome estab- 
lished facts. “ The tower is practically finished,’' 
he exclaimed, “ and it stands, invulnerable, on 
the eternal rock of scientific verity. Let me con- 
gratulate you, dear old boy, upon your triumph. 
How your Easter sermon all comes back to me ; that 
science breaks the bonds that torture and lifts the 
cloak of suffering, conquers the curses of heredity 
and rescues the victims of broken law ; that science 
speaks and the blind can see, the deaf can hear, 
the sick and halt take up their beds and walk ; 
that lepers are cleansed, dead are raised up, and 
the poor have true salvation brought them. How 
it stands upon no miracle or theory of an unknown 
God, but on eternal law, and works its wonders by 
restoring that which is evil to harmony with that 
which has been, is, and ever shall be the resurrec- 
tion and the life. It redeemeth our lives from 
destruction and sayeth : Return, ye children of men. 


84 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


Great Caesar, how you did stick to it, Willard, 
until your prophecy was all fulfilled.” 

“ Look here. Doc,” I replied, smiling, little 
dreaming at what was coming, “You know very 
well, in spite of our old argument, that I had no 
more to do with that sermon than the boy at your 
elbow. Why the sentiments are all yours, to a T.” 

“You didn’t find anything very conflicting in 
them, yourself, did you ?” the doctor asked. 

“ Why so far as I had defined ideas, at all, I sup- 
pose that I agreed with them,” I replied. 

“Well listen to this, Willard,” the doctor said, 
earnestly. “ So far as I had defined ideas at all I 
did not agree with them. They were not mine 
and never had been mine. They frightened me, 
and had I not been too interested in the manner 
of their transmission I should have shut them out 
as rank blasphemy. But I couldn’t think of one 
without the other,-and I thought and thought till 
I realized that in them lay the very foundation of 
truth. Every day of my life I have understood 
and believed them better. Now, why do you try 
to evade the responsibility for having laid the 
foundation, when you are also responsible for the 
entire tower.” 

“ Doc,” I exclaimed, “ I wonder that even these 
walls don’t laugh at you. You have wrought out 
nature’s means to restore humanity, that brain and 
body has suffered long enough, and you are the 
fittest man on earth to have done it, for you haven’t 
so much as a willingness, much less a desire .to 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


85 


cloak yourself in the glory, or even to gather a 
thread from out of the blaze to make a ring halo 
for your blessed cranium. Where other men would 
mount the clouds and ride like little gods on big 
tin wheels, you limp along the pavement out of 
preference, the same dear old Desmonde still, 
though heaven’s own chariot of fire stands waiting 
for you at the curb. So far so good, old man, for 
verily I believe that you are happiest when hunting 
for sick paupers in the slums. But when such a 
triumph as this drives even you to an ecstasy that 
must vent itself, and you try to shirk the exalta- 
tion by shoving responsibility off on me, you are 
going a step too far. Don’t hint at such a thing 
outside, for mercy’s sake. They’d say that too 
much learning had made you mad, and slip you into 
an insane retreat.” 

The doctor watched me with half-closed eyes for 
a moment, then said : 

“ The sermon and the incident lifted me up, 
when the taunts and jeers of my professional com- 
patriots had belabored me to the very verge of for- 
saking my theories. You followed it up by coming 
after me into the club billiard room ; and the first 
thing you said when you saw me, was ‘ Shame on 
you, Desmonde. Drinking like a fish ! Smashing 
cues and cursing like a pirate ! Shame !’ ” 

I felt myself growing cold and creeping before 
that photograph of thoughts which had never been 
spoken and were only thought at the moment when 
I entered the club billiard room, five years before. 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


1 86 

‘‘ I knew that you were right,” the doctor con- 
tinued, with a smile. “But all men, and most of 
all Irishmen, rebel against authority. We’re ag’in 
the gov’ment from the start, you know. You 
kept on saying : ‘ Come over here to me. I have 
come all this way to know you, and I shall stay until 
I do.’ I asked you to dinner, but I kept away till 
I knew it was ready, and fought with Kate in the 
hall till I saw the girls carry in the soup. Your incor- 
rigible sobriety frightened me, and I wanted the 
table between us. 

“Still you were not satisfied. You said: ‘All 
this is superficial. Those whose outer doors are 
easiest opened keep their real treasures in vaults 
that are fire and burglar-proof, and friend-proof 
too. Open those inner doors to me. I am here to 
know you.’ ” 

I sat there dumb. The thoughts which the doc- 
tor was so calmly quoting had never entered my 
head except while I was waiting alone in the snug- 
gery that first afternoon at Muckross. He con- 
tinued : 

“ Well, I opened every door to you, from the 
observatory to the den, and still you asked for 
more. Then I unraveled my professional secrets 
and told you all my pet fancies — and, to my aston- 
ishment, they grew like mushrooms in the telling. 
Nothing has ever so astounded me as the way 
ideas have been conceived, developed and delivered 
during our wandering conversations. Far better 
than you, my friend, I have realized the aid that 


DESMONDS, M. D. 


187 


you were constantly affording me. However, un- 
roll as I would, dreams that I did not suppose the 
tortures of an inquisition could have dragged from 
me in their imperfect state, you were still unsatis- 
fied. 

“ I tried to distract you by my little powers of 
physical projection, but you lost patience with me, 
and, stretching out your hand, without so much as 
looking toward it, you touched a spring which I 
would have defied you to find at all, opened those 
gates, and, before you even saw what was behind 
them, you looked into my eyes and said ; ^ That is 
the door which I asked you to open. That is the 
secret you are hiding which I shall understand and 
conquer yet. See how easily I can control it even 
now.’ And though the fiend had gripped my throat, 
my heart, my brain — he had taken me so unawares 
— you calmly shut the gates and led me like a 
lamb away. When we reached the door the thing 
had vanished, and I could have taken my oath that 
you were a god and had performed a miracle.” 

Recalling so vividly my own thoughts and in- 
tentions, that first night in the den, I could have 
laughed or cried at the absurdity of the doctor’s 
interpretation. And yet the facts were as he 
stated them. Without waiting for reply he con- 
tinued : 

‘‘ Believe me, Willard, no more welcome guest 
ever entered a door, and not a day but has found 
you more welcome than its predecessor ; but know- 
ing your mission and much though I hoped you 


i88 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


would succeed, I defied you from the start. I 
could not help it. Yet you cannot point to a 
single instance in which you did not conquer. 
When I felt myself breaking down and realized 
that our work was still so incomplete as to be of 
little value if left in that shape for the world to 
demolish, I would have gladly sold my soul to the 
devil for a little longer life, as they used to, in the 
good old days ; but his majesty was no more in 
the market offering premiums on unknown quanti- 
ties for uncertain periods. Then the rope snapped, 
that night in the snuggery, and I was sinking. I 
knew it, when I saw you coming, and I knew you 
were coming to save me. I would have welcomed 
the devil, but the ruling passion to defy you was 
strong in death, and I am sure I tried to strangle 
you. The next I knew, however, it was morning 
and all was serene and beautiful. All you would 
admit was that you happened upon me in the 
snuggery, and suggested that I sleep it off ; but 
anyone else who knew the circumstances would 
declare that I was indebted to you for life itself 
and all its accomplishment after that, at least. 

“ I knew that it was only staving off the end, of 
course, and when I fell again I was so tired of tor- 
ture that I threw up my hands and said let her go. 
I knew that I was dying as I sat at the dinner 
table, and all that I wanted was to get to the den 
to die by my picture of Lenore. You looked at 
me as if you were going to try again to stretch 
me out, and I said to myself that I could not even 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


189 


be let die, while you were living ; that I must kill 
you first. I remember it perfectly, my friend, and 
I did my best to kill you. I don’t see how I failed. 
I only know that when I realized anything again I 
was in bed, and you, looking like a spectre, were 
holding the hand that was thirsting for your pre- 
cious gore. If I had asked you how it happened, 
you would have told me that as an after dinner 
joke you advised me to sleep for a week. So I 
didn’t ask. I simply thought. Thinking is your 
method, and a good one if one is not inclined to 
leap prematurely at appearances. 

“ I thought till I had thought it all out, and 
realized at what cost of nerve and courage my 
friend had twice stood in the breach and saved me ; 
what he had done and how he had done it ; ven- 
turing more than his patient, suffering infinitely 
more ; profiting nothing. It was the vicarious 
sacrifice of unadulterated friendship, Willard. I 
know it and appreciate it. Far be it from me to 
belittle it one atom, in suggesting that in a reality, 
which we do not yet understand, there was some- 
thing underlying it all, even in the promptings which 
persuaded you to start upon an idiotic holiday of 
thirty thousand miles at sea.- 

“ From the start there are the fruits of a well 
conceived and conducted campaign for the comple- 
tion of our system — and by their fruits ye shall 
know them. 

“ It does not follow that there» was outside aid 
or that others might not have done the work 


90 


DESMONDS, M. D. 


quicker. It is enough that we have done it. I 
should never have succeeded without you. You 
probably would not have thought of the work but 
for me. Something beyond my conscious percep- 
tion saw the need of help. Something higher than 
any recognized faculty found, in a distant land, a 
perfect counterpoise, to help me ; the only man I 
ever met whom I could love, and honor, and obey. 
That something from me communed with some- 
thing from you, as much beyond your conscious 
comprehension, with the result that you came and 
I received you. Almost imperceptibly you were 
conscious of being guided. Arguments were 
presented which you understood and upon which 
you acted, but you felt, continually, that the 
actions were out of proportion with the arguments 
— in other words that you were making a fool of 
yourself. I felt the same, in receiving you. 

“ Our minds were old friends and recognized 
each other instantly, when our eyes looked into 
strange faces, and wondered what it was attract- 
ing us. 

“ The results which we have felt radically contra- 
dict and defy the possibility of any spirit influence- 
external to both, working for either. Our own 
minds were working, in our brains as well as out 
of them, to the same end. It is doubtless always 
the case if we had eyes to see and perceptive facul- 
ties to comprehend, and this suggestive demonstra- 
tion ought to guid^ us to the discovery of the law 
and the vehicle, unveiling the whole mystery of 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


I9I 

psychic phenomena, upon precisely the lines which 
we laid down, five years ago, in our first conversa- 
tion, here in this den. It is our field for future 
work, and I am sure that in it lies the possibility of 
scientific demonstration whether or not there is an 
actual foundation for that lingering hope, that 
fond desire, that longing after immortality. 

“ Fortunately it is not essential to our system, 
however. It is only, at the best, a most useful ac- 
cessary to the tower ; for the tower itself is practi- 
cally finished. Finished ! Only think of it. And 
from turret to foundation stone it is every iota of 
it yours.” 

‘‘ Doc, you are crazy,” I exclaimed, springing to 
my feet. “You know as well as I that neither con- 
sciously nor unconsciously am I responsible for a 
single block, twist any happy blunder how you 
will.” 

He looked up, smiling, as he replied : “ I am a 
healer of the sick, Willard, and it is all I ever want 
to be. Without you the system would never have 
been completed. I will expound and teach and 
demonstrate it where you will, but by every right 
and reason you must stand as the acknowledged 
architect.” 

“You are mad,” I cried. “Will you stop talk- 
ing. If you have gathered anything from, me for 
mind or nerve or muscle I am very glad. That 
I was able to lend a friendly hand when you 
were ill was a most happy accident for me. More 
than that is simply idiotic, and I assure you it 
makes me feel exceptionally foolish, when I real- 


192 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


ize that after all these years of companionship I 
could not manipulate one single instrument for 
the simplest operation.” 

“ You managed one,” the doctor muttered, “ and 
under circumstances where I should have aban- 
doned an attempt as preposterously beyond all 
hope.” 

“ Who told you that?” I gasped. 

“ My dear fellow, it came to my inner conscious- 
ness as the result of your system of thought,” he 
replied'. ‘‘ But I was so sure that, when the reviver 
was finished, and worked to perfection upon vulgar 
nerves and grosser paralysis, and I wanted a pa- 
tient to experiment upon, for its action on the 
delicate tissues of the brain, I — ” 

“ You—” 

“ Steady, my boy. I’m coming at it rapidly. In 
short I did. But I took this precaution, first.” 
He handed me a letter, sealed and addressed to 
me. Read it. It will best explain the existing 
conditions. Everything was finished that could be 
done till the reviver was assured as a brain success. 
It didn’t kill me, as you see ; but it did revive ; 
proving, not only an unimpeachable theory and 
instrument, but also the accuracy of my surmise 
concerning the skill and courage and the friendship 
of my friend. But read the letter written for you 
in case I died.” 

Breaking the seal I read : ‘‘lam about to test 
our new reviver on my own cranium. Everything 
else is accomplished and written up expansively. 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


193 


All papers, diagrams and note's are properly ar- 
ranged in the desk drawers, in the den. 

“ I am confident of success, but if, through any 
mistake, it kills me, remember it is only a mistake 
and can be — must be rectified. 

“ Everything that is mine I give to you, without 
conditions ; and with only these three requests : 
Take care of Kate. Take care of Jack. See that 
our system is properly presented to the world. 

“ I owe nothing. I have no heirs. Everything 
is yours.” 

This was legally signed, witnessed and sealed. 
My hand trembled as I laid it down, but I could 
not have spoken, for my life. A sense of joy too 
keen for words, came with this mute evidence of 
Dr. Desmonde’s confidence. 

“ Put it in your pocket,” the doctor remarked, as 
I finished reading. “ It is the first will I ever 
made, and if anything should happen to me, before 
I’m moved to make another, it might save question 
concerning the instruments. 

“Yes, I tested the reviver. For a second my 
brain seemed floating in fire. I made the current 
a little strong. I gave one yell. I was thinking 
of the operation, but I shouted ‘ Lenore !’ Then I 
saw the old knife falling and I remembered and 
understood. But, strangest of all, it did not seem 
to cut the artery. Twice, since then, something 
has tried to start the old torture, but each time 
with the same result and the whole has passed off 
instantly. Some little cell, I suppose, is still para- 
lyzed, and I am quite willing that it should remain 


194 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


SO. Well, I sat there, remembering Lenore ; how 
I had loved her ; and thinking how happy we 
might have been, if she had only lived ; how happy 
life would be, now that its great work is over, if I 
could only love and be loved and live like other 
men. The thought never went farther than that 
until this afternoon ; for, till to-day, I never saw a 
face, a form, an eye, a hand that could compare 
with hers." 

Reverently Dr. Desmonde touched the spring, 
opened the gates, and sat, for a moment, silently 
looking at the face painted on the porcelain — so 
like and yet unlike Lenore. For myself, the thrill 
of pleasure for my friend was overwhelmed by 
thoughts of sadness for Lenore. 

Presently, with a boyish smile, as though it 
shamed him to be caught in a love tangle, the doc- 
tor continued : “ A patient came to me, to-day, 

with eyes that were like hers, but more ; with a 
face that was what hers might have been, by now ; 
for it was not a giddy girl, my friend. Don’t let it 
frighten you. It was a white-haired woman." 

An involuntary start, on my part, assured the 
doctor that it did frighten me, and he hastened to 
add : “ Not an old woman ; but something ideal 

— a face perennially young and hair prematurely 
white, like a veritable crown of glory. 

She simply said that an unhappy incident clung 
in her memory, impairing her usefulness ; and I’m 
blessed if she spoke another word. For once in 
my life I too ran short of conversation. Think of 
that. The only thing which I could clutch was an 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


195 


idea that struck me the other day, for radiators in 
air boxes round the ceilings in hospital wards, 
with suction ventilation through registers under 
each bed. It’s a great scheme, you know, and Tm 
going to test it in the Sailors’ Hospital ; but it 
must have proved excitingly restful to the morbid 
tissues of a lady’s brain. However, the operation 
was successful, and she went away happier because 
not quite so wise.” 

And you ?” I asked. 

Dr. Desmonde blushed, as he replied : “ I have 
been thinking of her ever since ; wondering whether, 
if I loved her and she loved me, there might not be 
a new life for me in which I could really live.” 

‘‘Suppose she is married,” I suggested. 

“ I’d trust my intuition against anything but a 
certificate,” he said, smiling confidently. 

“ Wouldn’t you be afraid to take a woman who 
had something to forget ?” I asked. 

“ Why man, if I loved her and she loved me she 
might be Katherine or Sappho ; what would it sig- 
nify? Perfect love casteth out fear,” he answered 
instantly, as I knew he would. 

“ And her name ?” I questioned. 

“ I don’t know,” he replied, as though it were of 
the least -possible consequence. “She left a five- 
pound note on the table — it is there still by the 
way — and went out. But a little knowledge is a 
dangerous thing, and I have it. I noticed that she 
left in a carriage from Warden’s. 

“ Now this is what I want of you : think the 
thing over for me, in your merciless, cold-blooded 


g6 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


way, alone in your room to-night and tell me, in 
the morning, how it strikes you. I may not abide 
by what you say, old chap, but nevertheless I 
shall value your opinion. See ?” 

“ It might be more to the point. Doc.,” I replied, 
“ If I were to give you a few facts right now, to 
help you in thinking it over for yourself. From 
the description you have given I think that your 
patient was a lady who came out with me on the 
steamer — a lady of sterling character and noble 
blood, by the way. I can explain to you, later, how 
it comes about that I am one of only two in the 
world who know a bit of her history. She has been 
morbidly afflicted with remorse, threatening to be- 
come insanity, over the fact that, in her girlhood, she 
was criminally wronged ; though it was under cir- 
cumstances which left her as innocent as a child un- 
born. She had even come to think herself an outcast 
from society, when, if the whitewash were off it, its 
quintessence of purity would not be so pure as she. 
The feeling gained its first strong grip long ago, in 
her belief that one whom she loved and who loved 
her had deserted her, without a word of explana- 
tion, because he discovered the fact. 

“ The man who wronged her and his only ac- 
complice are long since dead. The lover who de- 
serted her and I are the only living mortals who 
know of the incident. She has never heard from 
him since he left her, many years ago. I met her 
in London — indeed I went to London for the ex- 
press purpose of meeting her, because — ” 


DESMONDE, M. 1). 


97 


“ Because you loved her ! and she is yours ! and I 
had thought to rob my friend !” Dr. Desmonde 
was leaning over the table, clutching both my 
hands, with a look of pain in his honest face which 
words conld not portray. 

“No, no. Doc.,” I cried. “I do not love her. I 
only worship her. She is not mine. She is 
Lenore.” 

He staggered to his feet and with one hand on 
his forehead and the other pointing toward the 
shrine, gasped : “ Not my Lenore?” 

“ Yes, Doc.,” I shouted, and realized the happiest 
moment life could have for mortal man. “ She is 
your own Lenore. I went to London because I 
heard that she was still alive. It was just as you 
said to-night : the knife did not cut the artery. 
But I found that all these years she has supposed 
that during the operation you discovered her shame 
and shammed madness to get away without de- 
nouncing and disgracing her. She thought that 
you despised and detested her, and it has made her 
hate and detest herself so long that all that I 
could say could not convince her that you loved 
her still. I could only persuade her to come to 
you as a patient. But go to her. Doc. Go straight- 
way. She will believe you. And may all good 
be with you till we meet again.” 

Alone in the den with the golden shrine, by an 
irresistible impulse I whispered: “Jerusalem, 
Jerusalem, sing, for the night is o’er. Hosanna in 
the highest. Hosanna forever more.” 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


198 

CHAPTER XV. 

Every dapple on that polished wall was dear to 
me ; but as I sat there, alone, I felt only a homesick 
chill. The panorama of the past drifted before 
me, from the first night, with awful agony distort- 
ing Dr. Desmonde’s features as his eyes were 
riveted in ghastly horror on the painted porcelain, 
to the moment when his hand stretched longingly 
toward the angelic face and his eyes blazed with a 
joy unspeakable. 

Then suddenly I realized that I knew him ; that 
I had found a quality which I could understand ; 
that my little mission of curiosity was accom- 
plished. 

For lo ! The whole of life is love. The ethereal 
theory of omnific love is all that holds men to 
religion. Loving and being loved is all that makes 
life worth living. Without the colors of love, 
earth, paradise or heaven could only be painted in 
the glare of hell. 

Yes, I had seen the real man for a moment, and 
was it not for that I followed him ? It was com- 
ing events casting shadows before, which sent the 
homesick chill. 

I tried to deride the paltry errand which brought 
me; to feel that I had become useful to my friend 
and ought to stay ; but he had himself declared 
that the great work was done and that he longed 
to love and be -loved and live like other men. 
What was there in all of that for me ? Argue it as 


desmonde, m, d. 199 

I would I was outside ; not by his will or mine, 
but by blind necessity. 

Slowly but surely the facts arranged themselves 
and, against the strongest inclinations of my life, 
convinced me. And no sooner was it plain to me 
than, dear as Muckross was, I was possessed to 
leave it instantly. The glorious climax was past. 
Nothing could ever reproduce or equal it. I 
dreaded the risk of moments, even, that might be 
less. So I placed the letter which Dr. Desmonde 
had written me under the golden arch, and went 
out closing the self-locking door behind me. 

It was already day, and consulting a newspaper 
I found that an express was leaving in thirty 
minutes to connect, by the quickest route, with a 
mail steamer upon which my old return ticket 
would be available. 

My luggage had not even been unstrapped 
since its arrival from the London steamer. I 
stepped to the telephone and ordered a cab, wept a 
parting tear with Kate, rainbowed with smiles for 
the joy of our friend, gave Jack a parting pat and 
was off. 

Second thoughts came soon enough, with bitter 
regret and such torturing temptation to turn back 
that I almost leaped for joy when the lines of the 
mail steamer were at last cast off, and a stretch of 
black water appeared between me and the wharf 
where I had landed five years before, rendering 
my return impossible. 

Kate promised to keep my secret till I should be 
well out to sea, but while I stood watching the 


200 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


widening water a steward delivered a cable mes- 
sage with the brief comment — “ I couldn’t find 
you, sir, in the crowd before we left the wharf.” 

It said : “ Come back, dear friend, if only for an 
hour. Important.” And if nothing more, it 
brought me to a distinct realization of the utterly 
unreasonable folly of my departure; nor was 
there consolation in the thought that five or six 
weeks more must pass before a word from me in 
reply or explanation could reach my friend. 

I looked at the widening water, and even won- 
dered if by jumping, then, it might not be possible 
still to return to the receding wharf. 

I had but myself to thank for being there, yet it 
was as much against my will as Desmonde’s. Had 
I received the message when it arrived, I should 
certainly have turned back. That same forceful in- 
fluence, whatever it may yet prove to be, which so 
clearly impelled me to that spot five years before, 
now as distinctly and irresistibly impelled me from 
it. 

“ It must be for the best,” I muttered. “ At any 
rate, it is, and can’t be helped, and whatever is, is 
right.” Thus arguing, I watched the Heads sink 
lower into the sea behind us, leaving only 
the great revolving light to flash its long farewell, 
while the belt of fiery clouds faded in the west. 

The purser came for my ticket and warned me 
that the dinner gong had gone, but it roused no in- 
clination to leave my seclusion in the stern and 
mingle with the passengers. 

I was not wholly alone, however, for a little for- 


DESMONDE, M. D, 


. 201 


ward of me sat a woman, a professional nurse, I 
fancied, beside a boy of ten or twelve, stretched 
upon an invalid’s chair. 

Presently she left him saying, she would shortly 
return with his supper, and in a dreamy half-con- 
sciousness I studied him a little more closely by the 
quickly fading light. 

He was pitifully paralyzed. His feet were utterly 
helpless, and only one hand seemed capable of the 
weakest, most uncertain motion. His head was 
drawn to one side. His face was emaciated, and in 
the darkening twilight looked something ghostly, 
it was so haggard and white. 

I was sorry for him beyond expression, and 
thought again of Desmonde, wishing he were 
there, if for nothing but the joy that it would be to 
him to lift, as I knew he could, that burden of suf- 
fering. I longed to tell him and bring him there. 

Presently the woman returned, bringing with her 
a bowl of something, but, by that, it was so dark 
that I could no longer distinguish more than the 
outlines and movements against the electric lights 
now flashing a little farther forward along the deck ; 
while the increasing breeze and the swash of the 
waves rendered it difficult to distinguish the words 
she spoke when they were not especially distinct, 
much less any intonation or expression of the 
voice. 

Had I been fully conscious of what I was doing 
I should not have watched so closely, but as it was, 
no motion escaped me as the woman seated herself 
by the invalid’s chair, spread a white cloth in her 


202 


i)ESMONDE, M. JJ. 


lap and began to stir the contents of the bowl. 
Then a gentleman approached, doubtless coming 
from the saloon, as he had no hat, and going 
directly toward the woman with some evident in- 
tent. 

He was facing me, which left his features blank, 
as the lights were behind him, but his words were 
the easier heard above the wash of the waves. 
The woman, too, lifted her voice to reply, and 
there was no conscious struggle to overhear the 
following conversation : 

“ Upon what do you feed the lad. Madam ?” 
he asked. 

“ On arrowroot porridge,” she replied. 

“ Is he making the voyage for his health ?” 

“Yes. It is a last hope with his parents. They 
have tried everything else.” 

“ I trust they pay you fairly well to assume such 
responsibilty.” 

“ I have my regular fee and expenses for the 
round trip, but I’m thinking it will be the hardest 
work I ever did.” 

“ If the child should chance to die, your pay, 
will, of course, keep on.” 

“ Of course it will.” 

“ It might not be the worst thing that could 
happen, then.” 

“ It would surely be a great relief to him as well 
me, and he’ll never be anything but a burden to 
everyone, if he lives.” 

“ I should imagine from his condition that sea- 
sickness would probably be fatal to him.” 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


203 


“ The doctors said it would, but that quite prob- 
ably he would not be sick. They advised his 
parents to run the risk. I am giving him only 
arrowroot, as a precaution.” 

“ Only arrowroot ?” the man repeated, in a way 
causing us both to start. “ Madam, it has been 
impressing me that you are very wise, but if that 
is only arrozvroot you dispel a dream. I have been 
saying to myself : ‘ This woman is a philosopher. 
She has mixed arsenic in that arrowroot. It will 
produce symptoms so akin to sea-sickness, that the 
shrewdest ship’s doctor will never suspect. The 
time for the attack is at the outset. It will simply 
realize the gravest fears of the physicians and 
prove the futility of their hopes. The effects will 
be brief and fatal, and the result a quiet, free and 
comfortable voyage, with the inner consciousness 
that a little, well protected evil has accomplished 
a very decided good.” 

Through this long sentence the woman sat as 
one dumb, but now, suddenly, uttering a faint cry, 
she threw the bowl over the rail, exclaiming : “ It 

is a lie.” 

Calmly, the man continued : “ If the vial, in 

your pocket follows the basin, the last evidence of 
your intention will have disappeared.” 

It was too dark to see distintly, but before he 
had finished speaking the woman’s hand moved 
again quickly toward the rail and without a pause 
the man continued : 

“ I am sure, madame, that in the end you will be 
better satisfied. There are two ways to improve 


204 


desmonde' M. V , 


our existing conditions. One is to obliterate that 
which is imperfect. The other is to perfect it. 
You, like a great many who are considered good 
and wise and orthodox, were taking one course, but 
now, if you will go below and fetch another basin, 
with only arrowroot, I will try the other course. 
When you return this little lad will be sitting up, 
fully capable of using his hands and feet and brain, 
like other boys. He will be beyond danger from 
sea-sickness, and will simply require your guardian 
care till the muscles are strong and he has become 
accustomed to control them. Give him this, and 
you will return a sound and happy boy to his par- 
ents with the better consciousness that, without 
any evil, you have done the world a greater good 
than if you had relieved it of a burden by hurrying 
it in the sea. Now fetch the arrowroot and be 
quick about it, for I have a patient waiting and 
must be off.’' 

The woman left him, without a word, while I, as 
helpless as the boy in the chair, leaned, motionless, 
against the rail. 

If the man spoke to the lad I did not hear it. If 
he moved I did not see it ; but the boy put one 
foot, then the other on the deck. With his hands 
upon the arm-rests he lifted himself to a sitting 
posture, and looking up at the man bending over him 
said, clearly : “ I didn’t know that I could, sir, but 

I can and I will. Oh I thank you so much, and I 
will not forget.” 

Then my breath came shorter and shorter and a 
sharp pain was over my heart as though it had 


DESMONDE, M. D. 20 $ 

stopped beating ; for the man was coming to- 
ward me. 

“ Desmonde !” I gasped, clutching the rail. 

Dear old boy,” he muttered, “ you’re bound to 
be a ministering angel wherever you go. You 
were just in the nick of time in calling me, for me 
as well as for the little lad yonder. When I sent 
you the wire — I see you have it in your hand — I 
had that moment succeeded in catching and guid- 
ing the third current to a battery. I knew it was 
the secret of physical projection, but I wanted you 
to come back and help me with first experiments. 
I wired you, and while I was waiting for a reply 
behold you came, your very self, instead, and told 
me of the boy. I caught the conductors from the 
battery. Lenore is watching the current and the 
first experiment has proved a grand success. 
Still thanks to you, old chap.” 

“ Desmonde !” I cried again, and sprang toward 
him. 

He laughed that dear old boyish laugh as my 
hands came together through empty air instead of 
clasping him, and I staggered back against the 
rail. 

“ There is little doubt that the world at large will 
be incredulous,” he sard, “ when Willard himself 
will let the evidence of his hands defy his conscious- 
ness and shatter his faith. I tell you, man, I’m 
sitting in the laboratory, clutching a couple of 
wires. If you want to feel me with your hands go 
there. 

“ Lenore is there, but I cannot see her. If she 


206 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


howled, I could not hear her. If you asked her, 
she would say that but fon what she could /(^’^/with 
her hands, there was precious little of me there. 
The rest is here with you. 

“It is just what Kate has seen and told you of, 
only that the forced increase of energy through the 
third current has given me marvelously increased 
strength and power. See what it has made me 
able to accomplish. Think of what it means for 
the world. 

“ It has long been possible for those who caught 
the trick, by the natural secretion of energy, to 
throw the mind upon an errand with sufficient force 
to present lively credentials to another mind. It 
is only the natural course of impressions reversed. 
What you see with your eyes and hear with your 
ears reaches your brain in the shape of impressions 
only, stamped like that telegram you are holding, 
with the mark of the office or bureau through which 
they came. This projection, too, acts backward, 
and through the mind produces the same impres- 
sions on the brain, while the brain, only accustomed 
to receive the sense of sight and sound through 
ears and eyes, naturally accepts the fact that the 
impressions came that way. When you are dream- 
ing, do you not seem to see and hear? 

“ Those impressions are made by your mind on 
your brain, just as now. 

“ The grand triumph of this last discovery is that 
it changes what before was but a doubtful mystery 
to an intelligible and scientific certainty, and that 
it so greatly augments the reasoning abilty. 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


207 


Before, the projection was like sending an irrespon- 
sible boy to deliver a message if he could, without 
even receiving a report. Now, I am conscious of 
bearing the message myself, and of remaining in 
constant communication with my brain. Is it not 
proven ? Did not the paralysis yield more 
quickly and completely than it could if my body 
had been here ? and was I not able to influence 
two at once? You saw me and heard me while I 
talked with the woman. That alone is progress. 
But let me tell you, Willard, you will see me as 
plainly if you shut your eyes and hear me as well 
if you stop your ears. Your hands have already 
told you that I am not here. It only aids the con- 
viction to think that your eyes and ears attest it. 
If you would feel my flesh you should not have 
left Muckross, for it is there.” 

“ I didn’t want to leave Muckross !” I gasped ; 
then, conscious of the philosophy by which, before, 
I had quieted the regret, I muttered. “ But I sup- 
pose that whatever is is right.” 

“ My dear boy,” he exclaimed, “ you know as 
well as any one in all the world that whatever is is 
generally wrong. From the cradle to the grave 
we spend our energy combatting things which are, 
to force that which is not, to be. What is is only 
right according as we make the best of it and are 
satisfied with the result. 

It is not right that you are leaving Muckross ; 
but thus far we have forced the fact to serve us, 
not only in demonstrating that you already possess 
the power of physicial projection, but in giving our 


2o8 


DESMONDE, M. D. 


last discovery the best experimental test it could 
possibly have received. When you locate some- 
where we will establish a means of communication, 
superior even to a wireless telegraph, and see 
what more can be accomplished. In the mean- 
time I have more than a favor to ask of you, in the 
same line of making the best of that which is. 
Take advantage of this long sea voyage before 
you to do something that shall open the way to 
giving what we have accomplished to the world. 
Tell it something of our work, in whatever way 
you will, that shall set it thinking toward a better 
means of salvation, and help it to understand and 
profit by the whole when it can be perfectly de- 
tailed. Don’t wait to consider, but go at it at 
once; to-night, for my sake, for the world’s, and 
success will keep you company. 

And now good-bye, old chap. I must be off. 
There’s been a patient waiting all this time in the 
consulting-room. I’d like to grasp your hand, but 
never mind. We may do that, too, before long. 
Meanwhile all evil be far from you and all good be 
with you till we meet again.” 

And here, for better or worse, my little circle is 
complete and my pen drops ; for it was at this 
point that I went below, and, without thought or 
consideration, began the first chapter ; hence — 


THE END. 


MY mn FLEMIIG’S 

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